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https://archive.org/details/criticalexegeticOOmoft_0 





© be 
anternational Critical Commentary 
on the Holy Seriptures of the Old and 


Ae Cestaments. 





UNDER THE PRESENT EDITORSHIP OF 


THE REV. ALFRED PLUMMER, M.A., D.D. 


Sometime Master of University College, Durham 
PLANNED AND FOR YEARS EDITED BY 


THE LATE REV. PROFESSOR SAMUEL ROLLES DRIVER, D.D., D.Litt. 
THE REV. ALFRED PLUMMER, M.A., D.D. 
THE LATE REv, PROFESSOR CHARLES AUGUSTUS BRIGGS, D.D., D.Litt, 


a } ne 
Ali © Ness we 
he ae ») 


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u 


THE INTERNATIONAL CRITICAL COMMENTARY 


A CRITICAL AND EXEGETICAL 
COMMENTARY 


ON THE 


EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS 


BY | 


Lb 
JAMES MOFFATT 
D.D., D.Litt., Hon. M.A. (Oxon.) 


Edinburgh: T. & T. CLARK, 38 George Street 


PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY 
MORRISON AND GIBB LIMITED 
FOR 
Tn & T..C UA Rik, iD EN Bi RG 


NEW YORK: CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS 


FIrseelSprrion oi 3) G24 


Reprinted ss 4. 1 948 
” . ‘ ° . 1952 
. 2 ° . ° . LO57 


The Rights of Translation and of Reproduction are Reserved 


TO THE MEMORY OF 
THREE SCOTTISH EXPOSITORS OF IIPOS EBPAIOY= : 
A, B. BRUCE, 

A. B. DAVIDSON, 
AND 
MARCUS DODS. 





PREFACE. 


IT is ten. years since this edition was first drafted. 
Various interruptions, of war and peace, have prevented 
me from finishing it till now, and I am bound to acknow- 
ledge the courtesy and patience of the editor and the 
publishers. During the ten years a number of valuable 
contributions to the subject have appeared. Of these as 
well as of their predecessors I have endeavoured to take 
account; if I have not referred to them often, this has 
been due to no lack of appreciation, but simply because, 
in order to be concise and readable, I have found it 
necessary to abstain from offering any catena of opinions 
in this edition. The one justification for issuing another 
edition of IIpos ‘EBpaiovs seemed to me to lie in a fresh 
point of view, expounded in the notes—fresh, that is, in 
an English edition. I am more convinced than ever 
that the criticism of this writing cannot hope to make 
any positive advance except from two negative con- 
clusions. One is, that the identity of the author and of 
his readers must be left in the mist where they already 
lay at the beginning of the second century when the 
guess-work, which is honoured as “ tradition,” began. The 
other is, that the situation which called forth this remark- 
able piece of primitive Christian thought had nothing to do 
with any movement in contemporary Judaism. The writer 
of IIpos ‘EBpaiovs knew no Hebrew, and his readers were 
in no sense ‘E8paiot. These may sound paradoxes. I 
agree with those who think they are axioms. At any 


ix 


x PREFACE 


rate such is the point of view from which the present 
edition has been written ; it will explain why, for example, 
in the Introduction there is so comparatively small space 
devoted to the stock questions about authorship and date. 

One special reason for the delay in issuing the book 
has been the need of working through the materials 
supplied for the criticism of the text by von Soden’s 
Schriften des Neuen Testaments (1913) and by some 
subsequent discoveries, and also the need of making a 
first-hand study of the Wisdom literature of Hellenistic 
Judaism as well as of Philo. Further, I did not feel 
justified in annotating IIpos “EB8paiovs without reading 
through the scattered ethical and philosophical tracts 
and treatises of the general period, like the De Mundo 
and the remains of Teles and Musonius Rufus, 

“A commentary,” as Dr. Johnson observed, “must arise 
from the fortuitous discoveries of many men in devious 
walks of literature.” No one can leave the criticism of a 
work like IIpos “‘Epaious after twelve years spent upon 
it, without feeling deeply indebted to such writers as 
Chrysostom, Calvin, Bleek, Riehm, and Riggenbach, who 
have directly handled it. But I owe much to some 
eighteenth-century writings, like L. C. Valckenaer’s Scholia 
and G. D. Kypke’s Odbservationes Sacrae, as well as to 
other scholars who have lit up special points of inter- 
pretation indirectly. Where the critical data had been 
already gathered in fairly complete form, I have tried 
to exercise an independent judgment; also I hope some 
fresh ground has been broken here and there in ascertain- 
ing and illustrating the text of this early Christian 
masterpiece. 

JAMES MOFFATT. 


GLASGOW, 15th February 1924. 


CONTENTS, 


i 
PREFACE , : ; ; - ' 
INTRODUCTION : ; : 5 ‘ 
§ 1. Origin and Aim . : 
§ 2. Religious Ideas 
§ 3. Style and Diction 
§ 4. Text, Commentaries, etc. : ; 
COMMENTARY - : : : ; 
INDEXES . ; , 4 is : 
I. Greek . ; ; ; 4 


II. Subjects and Authors , ‘ 
III. Quotations, etc., of the Old Testament. 


PAGE 

1X 
x1i—Ixxvi 
Xlil 

XXX 

lvi 

Ixiv 


I—247 
248-264 
248 


259 
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INTRODUCTION. 


a 


§ 1. ORIGIN AND AIM. 


(i) 

DurincG the last quarter of the first century A.D. a little master- 
piece of religious thought began to circulate among some of the 
Christian communities. The earliest trace of it appears towards 
the end of the century, in a pastoral letter sent by the church 
of Rome to the church of Corinth. The authorship of this 
letter is traditionally assigned to a certain Clement, who 
probably composed it about the last decade of the century. 
Evidently he knew IIpds “EBpaiovs (as we may, for the sake of 
convenience, call our writing); there are several almost verbal 
reminiscences (cp. Dr. A. J. Carlyle in Zhe New Testament in the 
Apostolic Fathers, pp. 44f., where the evidence is sifted). This 
is beyond dispute, and proves that our writing was known at 
Rome during the last quarter of the first century. A fair speci- 
men of the indebtedness of Clement to our epistle may be seen 
in a passage like the following, where I have underlined the 
allusions : 


62-5 A NK > / A Xr , > A , , 

3 Os Oy dravyacpa THS meyadwovvyns avTodv, ToTOVTH peEiCwv 
ya > 7 7 7 y ’ 
eativ ayyéAwy, dow Siadopwtepoy dvoyxa KexAnpovo- 
pykev’ yéyparra. yap ovtws" 


an \ a“ , 
0 ToL@Y TOUS ayyéAoUS adTOU TVEvpaTa 





\ X \ > “ x / 
Kat Tovs AeLTOUpyovs avTod wupos pAoya. 





; pa’ \ a“ ea 3 a 4 > ¢ 8 / e 
€7l O€ TW VL y QvuTOV OUTWS ELTTEV O EOTOTHS 


ey > , 
VLOS [LOU EL OV, 


eyo onpepov yeyevvynka oe 


” > . a \ } lA é@ ‘ rt 7 
airnoat Tap é€“ov, Kal dwcw cor eOvn THv KANpovopyiav 
Gov Kal THY KaTacxXEeclv TOU TA TEpata THS Vis. 
/ 
kal wdAw A€yet mpos avbrov" 


xiii 


XIV THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS 


Kadov ék deEt@v pov, 


o vA lal \ > be ¢€ , lad 56 
€WS AV 66 TOUS €xOpovs Gov UOT OOLOV TWYV TOOWV GOV, 


f - € 2 , € A \ 5) , tal 
tives ovv ol €xOpoi; of davtAor Kat avTiTaccopevoe TH 
GeXjpatt avTod. 


To this we may add a sentence from what precedes : 


36! “Incody Xpiordv rov dpxiepéa 218 GUvarat Tols weipagfouevoas Bon- 
Trav mpocpopav judy, Tov mpoordrny Ojoa. . . . 3! KaTavojoate Tov 
Kal BonOdor tis doOevelas judy. dmdécroXov kal dpxrepéa Tis duodoylas 


nuar Inoodv. 


The same phrase occurs twice in later doxologies, dia rov 
dpxvepéws Kal mpoordrov (tav Wuydv judy, 61°) (jpav, 641) “Iycod 
Xptorov. There is no convincing proof that Ignatius or 
Polykarp used IIpés “Efpaious, but the so-called Epistle of 
Barnabas contains some traces of it (eg. in 4% 556 and 617-19), 
Barnabas is a second-rate interpretation of the OT ceremonial 
system, partly on allegorical lines, to warn Christians against 
having anything to do with Judaism; its motto might be taken 
from 3° wa px mpocpncowpeda ws mpoondrvtat (v2. émjdvToL) TO 
éxetvwy vouw. In the homily called 2 Clement our writing is 
freely employed, eg. in 3 

118 Sore, ddeApol pov, un SiupvyG- 10% xaréxwuev THY duoroylayv ris 
pev, GANG EXmrloavres Vropelvwuev, va édAmldos akwwH, wioTds yap oO émaryyet- 
Kalrov uo Ody Komowpueda, mioTds yap duevos. sere kaa) ot 
dori 6 émayyerddmevos Tas dvTyucBlas ~— 
dmoddévar éxdotw epywy avbrod. 











1° dwrobéuevae éxetvo 8 mepixelucda 12! rocodrov exovres meptxeiuevov 
végos Ty abrov OeAjoet. nuty vépos mapTrupwy, byKov arobémevot 
nays wavTa, WE 

164 mpocevyn dé ex Kars ouvec- 1318 mpocevxecOe rept judy’ red6- 
Onoews. Pay > DAL wea yap ore kahny suveldinow Ex omer, 


“It seems difficult, in view of the verbal coincidences, to 
resist the conclusion that the language of 2 Clement is un- 
consciously influenced by that of Hebrews” (Dr. A. J. Carlyle 
in Zhe New Testament in the Apostolic Fathers, p. 126). As 
2 Clement is, in all likelihood, a product either of the Roman 
or of the Alexandrian church, where IIpos “E8paiovs was early 
appreciated, this becomes doubly probable. 

There is no reason why Justin Martyr, who had lived at 
Rome, should not have known it; but the evidence for his use 
of it (see on 3! rr‘ etc.) is barely beyond dispute. Hermas, 
however, knew it; the Skepherd shows repeated traces of it (cf. 
Zahn’s edition, pp. 439f.). It was read in the North African 
church, as Tertullian’s allusion proves (see p. xvii), and with par- 
ticular interest in the Alexandrian church, even before Clement 


INTRODUCTION XV 


wrote (cp. p. xviii). Clement’s use of it is unmistakable, though 
he does not show any sympathy with its ideas about sacrifice.! 
Naturally a thinker like Marcion ignored it, though why it shared 
with First Peter the fate of exclusion from the Muratorian canon 
is inexplicable. However, the evidence of the second century 
upon the whole is sufficient to show that it was being widely 
circulated and appreciated as an edifying religious treatise, 
canonical or not. 
(ii.) 

By this time it had received the title of pds “EGpadovs. 
Whatever doubts there were about the authorship, the writing 
never went under any title except this in the later church; which 
proves that, though not original, the title must be early. 
‘EBpato.? was intended to mean Jewish Christians. ‘Those who 
affixed this title had no idea of its original destination; other- 
wise they would have chosen a local term, for the writing is 
obviously intended for a special community. They were struck 
by the interest of the writing in the OT sacrifices and priests, 
however, and imagined in a superficial way that it must have 
been addressed to Jewish Christians. “Efpaioc was still an 
archaic equivalent for ‘Iovdato.; and those who called our writing 
IT pds “EGpafovs must have imagined that it had been originally 
meant for Jewish (z.e. Hebrew-speaking) Christians in Palestine, 
or, in a broader sense, for Christians who had been born in 
Judaism. The latter is more probable. Where the title origin- 
ated we cannot say; the corresponding description of 1 Peter 
as ad gentes originated in the Western church, but IIpos “ESpaious 
is common both to the Western and the Eastern churches. 
The very fact that so vague and misleading a title was added, 
proves that by the second century all traces of the original 
destination of the writing had been lost. It is, like the Ad 
Familiares of Cicero’s correspondence, one of the erroneous 
titles in ancient literature, “hardly more than a reflection of the 
impression produced on an early copyist” (W. Robertson Smith). 
The reason why the original destination had been lost sight of, 
was probably the fact that it was a small household church—not 
one of the great churches, but a more limited circle, which may 
have become merged in the larger local church as time went on. 
Had it been sent, for example, to any large church like that at 
Rome or Alexandria, there would have been neither the need 

Cp. R. B. Tollington’s Clement of Alexandria, vol. ii. pp. 225 f. 

2 It is quite impossible to regard it as original, in an allegorical sense, as 
though the writer, like Philo, regarded 6 ‘Epaios as the typical believer who, 
a second Abraham, migrated or crossed from the sensuous to the spiritual 


world. The writer never alludes to Abrahain in this connexion ; indeed he 
never uses ‘ESpaios at all. 


xvi THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS 


nor the opportunity for changing the title to IIpos ‘Efpaiovus. 
Our writing is not a manifesto to Jewish Christians in general, 
or to Palestinian Jewish Christians, as mpds “EGpaiovs would 
imply; indeed it is not addressed to Jewish Christians at all. 
Whoever were its original readers, they belonged to a definite, 
local group or circle. ‘That is the first inference from the writing 
itself; the second is, that they were not specifically Jewish 
Christians. The canonical title has had an unfortunate influence 
upon the interpretation of the writing (an influence which is still 
felt in some quarters). It has been responsible for the idea, 
expressed in a variety of forms, that the writer is addressing 
Jewish Christians in Palestine or elsewhere who were tempted, 
é.g., by the war of a.D. 66-70, to fall back into Judaism; and 
even those who cannot share this view sometimes regard the 
readers as swayed by some hereditary associations with their 
old faith, tempted by the fascinations of a ritual, outward system 
of religion, to give up the spiritual messianism of the church. 
All such interpretations are beside the point. The writer never 
mentions Jews or Christians. He views his readers without any 
distinction of this kind; to him they are in danger of relapsing, 
but there is not a suggestion that the relapse is into Judaism, or 
that he is trying to wean them from a preoccupation with Jewish 
religion. He never refers to the temple, any more than to cir- 
cumcision. It is the tabernacle of the pentateuch which interests 
him, and all his knowledge of the Jewish ritual is gained from the 
LXX and later tradition. The LXX is for him and his readers 
the codex of their religion, the appeal to which was cogent, 
for Gentile Christians, in the early church. As Christians, his 
readers accepted the LXX as their bible. It was superfluous to 
argue for it; he could argue from it, as Paul had done, as a 
writer like Clement of Rome did afterwards. How much the 
LXX meant to Gentile Christians, may be seen in the case of a 
man like Tatian, for example, who explicitly declares that he 
owed to reading of the OT his conversion to Christianity (4d 
Graecos, 29). It is true that our author, in arguing that Christ 
had to suffer, does not appeal to the LXX. But this is an 
idiosyncrasy, which does not affect the vital significance of the 
LXX prophecies. The Christians to whom he was writing had 
learned to appreciate their LXX as an authority, by their mem- 
bership in the church. Their danger was not an undervaluing 
of the LXX as authoritative; it was a moral and mental danger, 
which the writer seeks to meet by showing how great their re- 
ligion was intrinsically. This he could only do ultimately by 
assuming that they admitted the appeal to their bible, just as they 
admitted the divine Sonship of Jesus. There may have been 
Christians of Jewish birth among his readers; but he addresses 


INTRODUCTION XVli 


his circle, irrespective of their origin, as all members of the 
People of God, who accept the Book of God. ‘The writing, in 
short, might have been called ad gen¢es as aptly as First Peter, 
which also describes Gentile Christians as 6 Aads, the People 
(cp. on 217). The readers were not in doubt of their religion. 
Its basis was unquestioned. What the trouble was, in their case, 
was no theoretical doubt about the codex or the contents of 
Christianity, but a practical failure to be loyal to their principles, 
which the writer seeks to meet by recalling them to the full mean- 
ing and responsibility of their faith; naturally he takes them 
to the common ground of the sacred LXX. 

We touch here the question of the writer’s aim. But, before 
discussing this, a word must be said about the authorship. 

Had IIpds ‘Efpalous been addressed to Jews, the title would have been 
intelligible. Not only was there a [cvva}ywy} ‘EBp[alwv] at Corinth (cp. 
Deissmann’s Light from the East, pp. 13, 14), but a cuvaywyh AiBpéwv at Rome 
(cp. Schiirer’s Geschichte des /tid. Volkes*, iii. 46). Among the Jewish 
guvaywyat mentioned in the Roman epitaphs (cp. N. Miiller’s Dze judzsche 
Katakombe am Monteverde 2u Rom. . ., Leipzig, 1912, pp. t1of.), there 
is one of ‘E8péo., which Miiller explains as in contrast to the synagogue of 
**vernaclorum ” (Bepydkdot, Bepvaxdjovo), z.e. resident Jews as opposed to 
immigrants ; though it seems truer, with E. Bormann (Wener Studien, 1912, 
pp. 353f.), to think of some Kultgemeinde which adhered to the use of 
Hebrew, or which, at any rate, was of Palestinian origin or connexion. 


(iii.) 

The knowledge of who the author was must have disappeared 
as soon as the knowledge of what the church was, for whom he 
wrote. Who wrote IIpos “EBpaiouvs? We know as little of this 
as we do of the authorship of Zhe Whole Duty of Man, that 
seventeenth-century classic of English piety. Conjectures sprang 
up, early in the second century, but by that time men were no 
wiser than we are. The mere fact that some said Barnabas, 
some Paul, proves that the writing had been circulating among 
the adespota. It was perhaps natural that our writing should 
be assigned to Barnabas, who, as a Levite, might be sup- 
posed to take a special interest in the ritual of the temple— 
the very reason which led to his association with the later 
Epistle of Barnabas. Also, he was called vids zapaxAnoews 
(Ac 4°), which seemed to tally with He 137% (rod Adyou ris 
mapakAyoews), just as the allusion to “beloved” in Ps 127? 
(=2 S 12%4f-) was made to justify the attribution of the psalm 
to king Solomon. The difficulty about applying 2° to a man 
like Barnabas was overlooked, and in North Africa, at any rate, 
the (Roman ?) tradition of his authorship prevailed, as Tertullian’s 
words in de pudicitia 20 show: “volo ex redundantia alicuius 
etiam comitis apostolorum testimonium superinducere, idoneum 


6 


XVlil THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS 


confirmandi de proximo jure disciplinam magistrorum. Extat 
enim et Barnabae titulus ad Hebraeos, adeo satis auctoritati 
viri, ut quem Paulus juxta se constituerit in abstinentiae tenore: 
‘aut ego solus et Barnabas non habemus hoc operandi potes- 
tatem ?’ (1 Co 9°). Et utique receptior apud ecclesias epistola 
Barnabae illo apocrypho Pastore moechorum. Monens itaque 
discipulos, omissis omnibus initiis, ad perfectionem magis tendere,” 
etc. (quoting He 6*:). What appeals to Tertullian in Hpds 
‘EBpaiovs is its uncompromising denial of any second repentance. 
His increasing sympathy with the Montanists had led him to 
take a much less favourable view of the Shepherd of Hermas 
than he had once entertained; he now contrasts its lax tone 
with the rigour of IIpds ‘EBpafovs, and seeks to buttress his 
argument on this point by insisting as much as he can on the 
authority of [Ipods ‘E8paiovs as a production of the apostolic 
Barnabas. Where this tradition originated we cannot tell. 
Tertullian refers to it as a fact, not as an oral tradition; he 
may have known some MS of the writing with the title BapvaBa 
mpos ‘EBpaious (ériatoAn), and this may have come from Montanist 
circles in Asia Minor, as Zahn suggests. But all this is guessing 
in the dark about a guess in the dark. . 
Since Paul was the most considerable letter-writer of the 
primitive church, it was natural that in some quarters this 
anonymous writing should be assigned to him, as was done 
apparently in the Alexandrian church, although even there 
scholarly readers felt qualms at an early period, and endeavoured 
to explain the idiosyncrasies of style by supposing that some 
disciple of Paul, like Luke, translated it from Hebrew into 
Greek. This Alexandrian tradition of Paul’s authorship was 
evidently criticized in other quarters, and the controversy drew 
from Origen the one piece of enlightened literary criticism which 
the early discussions produced. "Ore 6 Xapakrnp THs Agews THS 
™pos “EBpaious Ervyeypappevns emiaroAns ovK éyer TO ev Aoyy 
tOLwTLKOV TOU door OXov, dporoynoavTos €auTov iSedryv elvat TO 
Adyw (2 Co 11°), rouréote TH ppadoer, GAAG eoriv 7H émuotodi) 
avwvbéce THs A€EEws EdAnvixwrépa, was 6 emir dpevos kpivew 
ppdcewy diahopas opohoynoat dv. madw te ad Ott Ta vonpata 
THS emioToANs Gavpaovd core, Kat ov devrepa Tov drooToALK@v 
Oporoyoupevwv Ypapparey, Kal TOUTO Gv ouppyg at elvar dAnbes ras 
6 ™ po EXwv ™m dvayvoret TH dTOTTONKT .. . Ey 8& dar oppawvo- 
pLEVOS elroy av OTL Ta prev vor para. TOU Phebe €oTiy, n be 
ppdais kal » ovvOeo.s aropuvnpovevoavros Twos TA act ciel Kal 
woTepe TXoALOypadyoavTds Twos Ta cipypéva bd Tod didacKdAov. 
el Tis ovv éxxAnoia Eyer TavTHY Tiv émiotorAV as LavAov, adrn 
eddoxipettw Kal érl TovTw. ov yap Eik7} ot dpxator avdpes ws TavAov 
aityv mapadedoxact, tis d@ 6 ypawas tiv ériotoAny, TO pev dAnbEs 


INTRODUCTION X)X 


Oeds oldev (quoted by Eusebius, 77.4. vi. 25. 11-14).! Origen ts 
too good a scholar to notice the guess that it was a translation 
from Hebrew, but he adds, 1 d€ eis jpas pldcaca t ioropta, b7r6 
TWwV pev AeyovTwv, OTL KXypas 0 yevomevos elo KOT OS ‘Popatov 
éypawe tiv emiotoAyy, vd Twwy dé OTe AovKas 6 ypdiyas TO 
evayyéAvov Kat tas IIpdgeus. ‘The idea that Clement of Rome 
wrote it was, of course, an erroneous deduction from the echoes 
of it in his pages, almost as unfounded as the notion that Luke 
wrote it, either independently or as an amanuensis of Paul—a 
view probably due ultimately to the explanation of how his 
gospel came to be an apostolic, canonical work. Origen yields 
more to the “ Pauline” interpretation of IIpos “EBpatovs than is 
legitimate ; but, like Erasmus at a later day,? he was living in 
an environment where the “Pauline” tradition was almost a 
note of orthodoxy. Even his slight scruples failed to keep the 
question open. In the Eastern church, any hesitation soon 
passed away, and the scholarly scruples of men like Clement of 
Alexandria and Origen made no impression on the church at 
large. It is significant, for example, ee when even Eusebius 
comes to give his own opinion (/4.£. ili. 38. 2), he alters the 
hypothesis about Clement of Rome, it makes him merely 
the translator of a Pauline Hebrew original, not the author 
of a Greek original. As a rule, however, Ipods “EBpaiovs was 
accepted as fully Pauline, and passed into the NT canon of the 
Asiatic, the Egyptian, and the Syriac churches without question. 
In the Syriac canon of A.D. 400 (text as in Souter’s Zext and 
Canon of NT, p. 226), indeed, it stands next to Romans in 
the list of Paul’s epistles (see below, § 4). Euthalius, it is true, 
about the middle of the fifth century, argues for it in a way 
that indicates a current of opposition still flowing in certain 
quarters, but ecclesiastically Ilpds “E@patovs in the East as a 
Pauline document could defy doubts. The firm conviction of 
the Eastern church as a whole comes out in a remark like that 
of Apollinarius the bishop of Laodicea, towards the close of the 
fourth century: mov yéypamtar dre Xapaxt7p EOTL THS UTOCTATEWS 
6 vids; Tapa TH dort ohw IIlavAw év tH mpos “EBpaious. Ovx 
exkAnovaleran. "Ad ou katnyyedy TO evayyéAvov Xpicrov, IavAov 
elvan wemiorevtat 7) emictoAn (Dial. de sancta Trin. 1,22). 

It was otherwise in the Western church, where Ilpds “EBpadous 
was for long either read simply as an edifying treatise, or, if 
regarded as canonical, assigned to some anonymous apostolic 


1 There is a parallel to the last words in the scoffing close of an epigram 


in the Greek Anthology (ix. 135) : ypdWe Tis ; olde Oeds* rivos elvexev ; olde kal 
aurés. 


2 


**Uta stilo Pauli, quod ad phrasin attinet, longe lateque discrepat, ita 
ad spiritum ac pectus Paulinum vehementer accedit.’ 


XX THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS 


writer rather than to Paul. Possibly the use made of [pds 
“EBpatous by the Montanists and the Novatians, who welcomed 
its denial of a second repentance, compromised it in certain 
quarters. Besides, the Roman church had never accepted the 
Alexandrian tradition of Paul’s authorship, Hence, even when, 
on its merits, it was admitted to the canon, there was a strong 
tendency to treat it as anonymous, as may be seen, for example, 
in Augustine’s references. Once in the canon, however, it 
gradually acquired a Pauline prestige, and, as Greek scholar- 
ship faded, any scruples to the contrary became less and less 
intelligible. It was not till the study of Greek revived 
again, at the dawn of the Reformation, that the question was 
reopened. 

The data in connexion with the early fortunes of IIpés ‘E8paious in church 
history belong to text-books on the Canon, like Zahn’s Geschichte d. NT 
Kanons, i. 283 f., 577f., 11. 160f., 358f. ; Leipoldt’s Geschichte d. NT Kanons, 
i. pp. 188f., 219f.; and Jacquier’s Le Nouveau Testament dans L’ Elise 
Chrétienne, i. (1911). 


Few characters mentioned in the NT have escaped the 
attention of those who have desired in later days to identify 
the author of Ipods “EBpaiovs. Apollos, Peter, Philip, Silvanus, 
and even Prisca have been suggested, besides Aristion, the 
alleged author of Mk 16%, JI have summarized these views 
elsewhere (Jntrod. to Lit. of NT.*, pp. 438-442), and it is super- 
fluous here to discuss hypotheses which are in the main due to 
an irrepressible desire to construct NT romances. Perhaps our 
modern pride resents being baffled by an ancient document, but 
it is better to admit that we are not yet wiser on this matter 
than Origen was, seventeen centuries ago. The author of Ipods 
“EBpaiovs cannot be identified with any figure known to us in 
the primitive Christian tradition. He left great prose to some 
little clan of early Christians, but who they were and who he 
was, TO pev dAnGes Feds otdev. To us he is a voice and no more. 
The theory which alone explains the conflicting traditions is that 
for a time the writing was circulated as an anonymous tract. 
Only on this hypothesis can the simultaneous emergence of 
the Barnabas and the Paul traditions in different quarters be 
explained, as well as the persistent tradition in the Roman 
church that it was anonymous. As Zahn sensibly concludes, 
“those into whose hands IIpds ‘EB8paiouvs came either looked 
upon it as an anonymous writing from ancient apostolic times, or ” 
else resorted to conjecture. If Paul did not write it, they 
thought, then it must have been composed by some other 
prominent teacher of the apostolic church. Barnabas was such 
a man.” In one sense, it was fortunate that the Pauline 
hypothesis prevailed so early and so extensively, for apart from 


INTRODUCTION XX1 


this help it might have been difficult for [pds ‘EBpaiovs to win 
or to retain its place in the canon. But even when it had been 
lodged securely inside the canon, some Western churchmen still 
clung for a while to the old tradition of its anonymity,! although 
they could do no more than hold this as a pious opinion. 
The later church was right in assigning Ipods ‘EBpaious a 
canonical position. The original reasons might be erroneous 
or doubtful, but even in the Western church, where they con- 
tinued to be questioned, there was an increasing indisposition 
to challenge their canonical result. 


(iv.) 


Thrown back, in the absence of any reliable tradition, upon 
the internal evidence, we can only conclude that the writer was 
one of those personalities in whom the primitive church was 
more rich than we sometimes realize. ‘Si l’on a pu comparer 
saint Paul 4 Luther,” says Ménégoz, ‘‘nous comparerions 
volontiers l’auteur de I|’Epitre aux Hébreux a Mélanchthon.” 
He was a highly trained éuddo0xados, perhaps a Jewish Christian, 
who had imbibed the philosophy of Alexandrian Judaism before 
his conversion, a man of literary culture and deep religious 
feeling. He writes to what is apparently a small community or 
circle of Christians, possibly one of the household-churches, to 
which he was attached. For some reason or another he was 
absent from them, and, although he hopes to rejoin them before 
long, he feels moved to send them this letter (1375) to rally 
them. It is possible to infer from 1374 (see note) that they 
belonged to Italy ; in any case, IIpds “EBpaiouvs was written either 
to or from some church in Italy. Beyond the fact that the 
writer and his readers had been evangelized by some of the 
disciples of Jesus (23+), we know nothing more about them. 
The words in 2% * do not mean that they belonged to the second 
generation, of course, in a chronological sense, for such words 
would have applied to the converts of any mission during the 
first thirty years or so after the crucifixion, and the only other 
inference to be drawn, as to the date, is from passages like 108F. 
and 13’, viz. that the first readers of [pds “Efpaiovs were not 
neophytes; they had lived through some rough experiences, and 
indeed their friend expects from them a maturity of experience 
and intelligence which he is disappointed to miss (5114); also, 

1 According to Professor Souter (7ext and Canon of NT, p. 190) the 
epistle is ignored by the African Canon (c. 360), Optatus of Mileue in 
Numidia (370-385), the Acts of the Donatist Controversy, Zeno of Verona, 
an African by birth, and Foebadius of Agen (0d. post 392), while ‘‘ Ambrosi- 


aster” (fourth century?) ‘‘uses the work as canonical, but always as an 
anonymous work.” 


Xxit THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS 


their original leaders have died, probably as martyrs (cp. on 13°). 
For these and other reasons, a certain sense of disillusionment 
had begun to creep over them. IL pds “EGpaiovs is a ddyos 
TapakAncews, to steady and rally people who are zewpalopevor, 
their temptation being to renounce God, or at least to hesitate ~ 
and retreat, to relax the fibre of loyal faith, as if God were too 
difficult to follow in the new, hard situation. Once, at the 
outset of their Christian career, they had been exposed to mob- 
rioting (1082), when they had suffered losses of property, for the 
sake of the gospel, and also the loud jeers and sneers which 
pagans and Jews alike heaped sometimes upon the disciples. 
This they had borne manfully, in the first glow of their en- 
thusiasm. Now, the more violent forms of persecution had 
apparently passed; what was left was the dragging experience 
of contempt at the hand of outsiders, the social ostracism and 
shame, which were threatening to take the heart out of them. 
Such was their rough, disconcerting environment. Unless an 
illegitimate amount of imagination is applied to the internal data, 
they cannot be identified with what is known of any community 
in the primitive church, so scanty is our information. Least of 
all is it feasible to.connect them with the supposed effects of the 
Jewish rebellion which culminated in A.D. 70. IIpos “EBpaiovs 
cannot be later than about a.p. 85, as the use of it in Clement 
of Rome’s epistle proves; how much earlier it is, we cannot 
say, but the controversy over the Law, which marked the Pauline 
phase, is evidently over. 


It is perhaps not yet quite superfluous to point out that the use of the 
present tense (e.g. in 7% 7° 8% off 131°) is no clue to the date, as though this 
implied that the Jewish temple was still standing. The writer is simply 
using the historic present of actions described in scripture. It is a literary 
method which is common in writings long after A.D. 70, ¢.g. in Josephus, 
who observes (¢c. Apzon, i. '7) that any priest who violates a Mosaic regulation 
amrnyopeuTar unre Tots Bwuots waploracbar wnre peréxery TAS GAAns ayorelas 
(so Ant. ill. 6. 7-12, xiv. 2. 2, etc.). Clement of Rome similarly writes as 
though the Mosaic ritual were still in existence (40-41, T@ yap dpxepe? WSrae 
Nectoupylat dedouévar eloly . . . Kal Aevirats UWrat dtaxoviar émixewrac... 
mporpépovrat Ovoiar év ‘Tepovcadhu povy), and the author of the Zp. ad 
Diognet. 3 writes that of 6€ ye @volats adr Se aluaros Kal Kylons Kal dAoKauTw- 
pedrwy émiredetvy olduevor kal ravrats Tats Tiuatis avdrov yepaipew, ovdévy por 
Soxodar diadépewy Tv els TA KwHA Thy av’riy évdeckvuuévwv Pirotiulay. The 
idea that the situation of the readers was in any way connected with the crisis 
of A.D. 66-70 in Palestine is unfounded. IIpds ‘EBpatovs has nothing to do 
with the Jewish temple, nor with Palestinian Christians. There is not a 
syllable in the writing which suggests that either the author or his readers 
had any connexion with or interest in the contemporary temple and ritual of 
Judaism ; their existence mattered as little to his idealist method of argu- 
ment as their abolition. When he observes (8!%) that the old d:a@jxn was 
éyyvs ddavicuod, all he means is that the old régime, superseded now by 
Jesus, was decaying even in Jeremiah’s age. 


INTRODUCTION Xxill 


(v.) 


The object of IIpos ‘EBpatovs may be seen from a_ brief 
analysis of its contents. The writer opens with a stately para- 
graph, introducing the argument that Jesus Christ as the Son of 
God is superior (xpeirrwv) to angels, in the order of revelation 
(11-218), and this, not in spite of but because of his incarnation 
and sufferings. He is also superior (xkpeirtwv) even to Moses 
(31°), as a Son is superior to a servant. Instead of pursuing 
the argument further, the writer then gives an impressive bible 
reading on the gsth psalm, to prove that the People of God 
have still assured to them, if they will only have faith, the divine 
Rest in the world to come (3°-41%). Resuming his argument, 
the writer now begins to show how Jesus as God’s Son is superior 
to the Aaronic high priest (4!4-5!°), This is the heart of his 
subject, and he stops for a moment to rouse the attention of his 
readers (5-620) before entering upon the high theme. By a 
series of skilful transitions he has passed on from the Person of 
the Son, which is uppermost in chs. 1-4, to the Priesthood 
of the Son, which dominates chs. 7-8. Jesus as High Priest 
mediates a superior (xpe(rrwv) order of religion or dsa6yKy than 
that under which Aaron and his successors did their work for the 
People of God, and access to God, which is the supreme need of 
men, is now secured fully and finally by the relation of Jesus to 
God, in virtue of his sacrifice (69-8!) The validity of this 
sacrifice is then proved (g!-10!8); it is absolutely efficacious, as 
no earlier sacrifice of victims could be, in securing forgiveness 
and fellowship forman. The remainder of the writing (10!%—1374) 
is a series of impressive appeals for constancy. The first (1019-31) 
is a skilful blend of encouragement and warning. He then 
appeals to the fine record of his readers (10%), bidding them be 
worthy of their own past, and inciting them to faith in God by 
reciting a great roll-call of heroes and heroines belonging to God’s 
People in the past, from Abel to the Maccabean martyrs (111°), 
He further kindles their imagination and conscience by holding 
up Jesus as the Supreme Leader of all the faithful (1213), even 
along the path of suffering; besides, he adds (12* 1"), suffering 
is God’s discipline for those who belong to his household. To 
prefer the world (12!?1”) is to incur a fearful penalty; the one 
duty for us is to accept the position of fellowship with God, ina 
due spirit of awe and grateful confidence (1218-9). A brief note 
of some ethical duties follows (13'7), with a sudden warning 
against some current tendencies to compromise their spiritual 
religion (13°16), A postscript (13!7%4), with some fersonalia, 
ends the epistle. 

It is artificial to divide up a writing of this kind, which is not 


XXIV THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS 


a treatise on theology, and I have therefore deliberately abstained 
from introducing any formal divisions and subdivisions in the 
commentary. ‘The flow of thought, with its turns and windings, 
is best followed from point to point. So far as the general plan 
goes, it is determined by the idea of the finality of the Christian — 
revelation in Jesus the Son of God. This is brought out (A) by 
a proof that he is superior to angels (11-218) and Moses (31), 
followed by the special exhortation of 3°-4!%, Thus far it is 
what may be termed the Personality of the Son which is discussed. 
Next (B) comes the Son as High Priest (444—7°8), including the 
parenthetical exhortation of 514-679. The (C) Sacrifice of this 
High Priest in his Sanctuary then (81-1018) is discussed, each of 
the three arguments, which are vitally connected, laying stress 
from one side or another upon the absolute efficacy of the 
revelation. This is the dominant idea of the writing, and it 
explains the particular line which the writer strikes out. He 
takes a very serious view of the position of his friends and 
readers. They are disheartened and discouraged for various 
reasons, some of which are noted in the course of the epistle. 
There is the strain of hardship, the unpleasant experience of 
being scoffed at, and the ordinary temptations of immorality, 
which may bring them, if they are not careful, to the verge of 
actual apostasy. The writer appears to feel that the only way to 
save them from ruining themselves is to put before them the 
fearful and unsuspected consequences of their failure. Hence 
three times over the writer draws a moving picture of the fate 
which awaits apostates and renegades (6*f 1076f 1215f), But the 
special line of argument which he adopts in 5-10!8 must be 
connected somehow with the danger in which he felt his friends 
involved, and this is only to be explained. if we assume that their 
relaxed interest in Christianity arose out of an imperfect concep- 
tion of what Jesus meant for their faith. He offers no theoretical 
disquisition ; it is to reinforce and deepen their conviction of the 
place of Jesus in religion, that he argues, pleads, and warns, 
dwelling on the privileges and responsibilities of the relationship 
in which Jesus had placed them. All the help they needed, all 
the hope they required, lay in the access to God mediated by 
Jesus, if they would only realize it. 

This is what makes the writing of special interest. In the 
first place (a) the author is urged by a practical necessity to 
think out his faith, or rather to state the full content of his faith, 
for the benefit of his readers. Their need puts him on his 
mettle. ‘‘ Une chose surtant,” says Anatole France, ‘donne le 
lattrait 4 la pensée des hommes: c’est linquiétude. Un esprit 
qui n’est point anxieux m/’irrite ou m’ennuie.” In a sense all 
the NT writers are spurred by this anxiety, but the author 


INTRODUCTION XXV 


of IIpos “Efpaiovs pre-eminently. It is not anxiety about his 
personal faith, nor about the prospects of Christianity, but about 
the loyalty of those for whom he feels himself responsible ; his 
very certainty of the absolute value of Christianity makes him 
anxious when he sees his friends ready to give it up, anxious on 
their behalf, and anxious to bring out as lucidly and persuasively 
as possible the full meaning of the revelation of God in Jesus. 
What he writes is not a theological treatise in cold blood, but 
a statement of the faith, alive with practical interest. The 
situation of his readers has stirred his own mind, and he bends 
all his powers of thought and emotion to rally them. There is a 
vital urgency behind what he writes for his circle. But (4), more 
than this, the form into which he throws his appeal answers to 
the situation of his readers. He feels that the word for them is 
the absolute worth of Jesus as the Son of God; it is to bring 
this out that he argues, in the middle part of his epistle, so 
elaborately and anxiously about the priesthood and sacrifice of 
Jesus. The idealistic conception of the two spheres, the real 
and eternal, and the phenomenal (which is the mere oxida and 
trdderypa, a tapaBoXrny, an avtiturov of the former), is applied to 
the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, which inaugurates and realizes the 
eternal dva6yxn between God and man. Ina series of contrasts, 
he brings out the superiority of this revelation to the OT dtabjKxy 
with its cultus. But not because the contemporary form of the 
latter had any attractions for his readers. It is with the archaic 
oxynvy described in the OT that he deals, in order to elucidate 
the final value of Jesus and his sacrifice under the new dva7xn, 
which was indeed the real and eternal one. ‘To readers like his 
friends, with an imperfect sense of all that was contained in their 
faith, he says, ‘Come back to your bible, and see how fully it 
suggests the positive value of Jesus.” Christians were finding 
Christ in the LXX, especially his sufferings in the prophetic 
scriptures, but our author falls back on the pentateuch and the 
psalter especially to illustrate the commanding position of Jesus 
as the Son of God in the eternal é:a0y«xy, and the duties as well 
as the privileges of living under such a final revelation, where 
the purpose and the promises of God for his People are realized 
as they could not be under the OT dia6yxn. Why the writer 
concentrates upon the priesthood and sacrifice of Jesus in this 
eternal order of things, is due in part to his general conception 
of religion (see pp. xliif.). For him there could be no religion 
without a priest. But this idea is of direct service to his readers, 
as he believes. Hence the first mention of Jesus as dpyvepevs 
occurs as a reason for loyalty and confidence (2!4*). Nothing 
is more practical in religion than an idea, a relevant idea power- 
fully urged. When the writer concentrates for a while upon 


XXV1 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS 


this cardinal idea of Jesus as dpyxuepeds, therefore, it is because 
nothing can be more vital, he thinks, for his friends than to show 
them the claims and resources of their faith, disclosing the 
rich and real nature of God’s revelation to them in- his Son. 
Access to God, confidence in God, pardon for sins of the past, 
and hope for the future—all this is bound up with the dvaéj«n of 
Christ, and the writer reveals it between the lines of the LXX, 
to which as members of the People of God his friends naturally 
turned for instruction and revelation. This dca6y«y, he argues, 
is far superior to the earlier one, as the Son of God is superior to 
angels and to Moses himself; nay more, it is superior in efficacy, 
as the real is superior to its shadowy outline, for the sacrifice 
which underlies any d:a6yx«y is fulfilled in Christ as it could not 
be under the levitical cultus. The function of Christ as high 
priest is to mediate the direct access of the People to God, and 
all this has been done so fully and finally that Christians have 
simply to avail themselves of its provisions for their faith and 
eed: 

What the writer feels called upon to deal with, therefore, is 
not any sense of disappointment in his readers that they had not 
an impressive ritual or an outward priesthood, nor any hankering 
after such in contemporary Judaism; it is a failure to see that 
Christianity is the absolute religion, a failure which is really 
responsible for the unsatisfactory and even the critical situation 
of the readers. To meet this need, the writer argues as well as 
exhorts. He seeks to show from the LXX how the Christian 
faith alone fulfils the conditions of real religion, and as he 
knows no other religion than the earlier phase in Israel, he takes 
common ground with his readers on the LXX record of the first 
d.a6yxy, in order to let them see even there the implications and 
anticipations of the higher. 

But while the author never contemplates any fusion of 
Christianity with Jewish legalism, and while the argument betrays 
no trace of Jewish religion as a competing attraction for the 
readers, it might be argued that some speculative Judaism had 
affected the mind of the readers. No basis for this can be 
found in 13%. Yet if there were any proselytes among the 
readers, they may have felt the fascination of the Jewish system, 
as those did afterwards who are warned by Ignatius (ad PAilad. 
6, etc.), ‘‘ Better listen to Christianity from a circumcised Chris- 
tian than to Judaism from one uncircumcised.” ‘It is mon- * 
strous to talk of Jesus Christ and iovduifer” (ad Magnes. 10). 
This interpretation was put forward by Haring (Studien und 
Kritiken, 1891, pp. 589f.), and it has been most ingeniously 
argued by Professor Purdy (Z£xfosztor§, xix. pp. 123-139), who 
thinks that the emphasis upon “Jesus” means that the readers 


INTRODUCTION XXVil 


were exposed to the seductions of a liberal Judaism which offered 
an escape from persecution and other difficulties by presenting 
a Christ who was spiritual, divorced from history; that this 
liberal, speculative Judaism came forward as ‘‘a more developed 
and perfected type of religion than Christianity”; and that, 
without being legalistic, it claimed to be a traditional, ritualistic 
faith, which was at once inward and ceremonial. The objection 
to such interpretations,! however, is that they explain zgnotum 
per tgnotius. We know little or nothing of such liberal Judaism 
in the first century, any more than of a tendency on the part of 
Jewish Christians to abandon Christianity about A.D. 70 for their 
ancestral faith. Indeed any influence of Jewish propaganda, 
ritualistic or latitudinarian, must be regarded as secondary, at 
the most, in the situation of the readers as that is to be inferred 
from IIpds “EGpaious itself. When we recognize the real method 
and aim of the writer, it becomes clear that he was dealing with 
a situation which did not require any such influence to account 
for it. ‘The form taken by his argument is determined by the 
conception, or rather the misconception, of the faith entertained 
by his friends; and this in turn is due not to any political or 
racial factors, but to social and mental causes, such as are 
sufficiently indicated in IIpds “Epaiovs itself. Had the danger 
been a relapse into Judaism of any kind, it would have implied 
a repudiation of Jesus Christ as messiah and divine—the very 
truth which the writer can assume! What he needs to do is not 
to defend this, but to develop it. 

The writing, therefore, for all its elaborate structure, has a 
spontaneous aim. It is not a homily written at large, to which 
by some afterthought, on the part of the writer or of some editor, 
a few personalia have been appended in ch. 13. The argu- 
mentative sections bear directly and definitely upon the situa- 
tion of the readers, whom the writer has in view throughout, 
even when he seems to be far from their situation. Which brings 
us to the problem of the literary structure of IIpds “EBpadous. 


(vi.) 


See especially W. Wrede’s monograph, Das /terarische Ratseld. Hebrier- 
briefs (1906), with the essays of E. Burggaller and R. Perdelwitz in Zeztschrif¢ 
fiir Neutest. Wissenschaft (1908, pp. 110f.; 1910, pp. 59f., 105f.); V. 
Monod’s De ¢ztulo epistulae vulgo ad Hebraeos inscriptae (1910); C. C. 


1Cp., further, Professor Dickie’s article in Expositor’, v. pp. 371f. The 
notion that the writer is controverting an external view of Christ’s person, 
which shrank, e.g., from admitting his humiliation and real humanity, had 
been urged by Julius Kogel in Dre Verborgenhett Jesu als des Messtas 
(Greifenswald, 1909) and in Der Sohn und die Sohne, ein exegetische Studie 
eu Heb 25-18 (1904). 


XXVI1il THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS 


Torrey’s article in the Journal of Biblical Literature (1911), pp. 137-156 ; 
J. W. Slot’s De letterkundige vorm v. d. Brief aan de Hebrder (1912), with 
J. Quentel’s essay in Revue Bibligue (1912, pp. 50f.) and M. Jones’ paper 
in Expositor’, xii. 426 f. 


The literary problem of IIpds “EBpatous is raised by the — 


absence of any address and the presence of personal matter in 
ch. 13. Why (a) has it no introductory greeting? And why (0) 
has it a postscript? As for the former point (a), there may have 
been, in the original, an introductory title. IIpds “EBpa/ovs opens 
with a great sentence (11), but Eph 1 is just such another, 
and there is no reason why the one should not have followed a 
title-address any more than the other.t It may have been lost 
by accident, in the tear and wear of the manuscript, for such 
accidents are not unknown in ancient literature. This is, at 
any rate, more probable than the idea that it was suppressed 
because the author (Barnabas, Apollos?) was not of sufficiently 
apostolic rank for the canon. Had this interest been operative, 
it would have been perfectly easy to alter a word or two in the 
address itself. Besides, Ipsos “E@patovs was circulating long 
before it was admitted to the canon, and it circulated even after- 
wards as non-canonical; yet not a trace of any address, Pauline 
or non-Pauline, has ever survived. Which, in turn, tells against 
the hypothesis that such ever existed—at least, against the 
theory that it was deleted when the writing was canonized. If 
the elision of the address ever took place, it must have been 
very early, and rather as the result of accident than deliberately. 
Yet there is no decisive reason why the writing should not have 
begun originally as it does in its present form. Nor does this 
imply (4) that the personal data in ch. 13 are irrelevant. Ipods 
“Efpaiovs has a certain originality in form as well as in content; 
it is neither an epistle nor a homily, pure and simple. True, 
down to 12” (or 1317) there is little or nothing that might not 
have been spoken by a preacher to his audience, and Valckenaer 
(on 4%) is right, so far, in saying, “‘haec magnifica ad. Hebraeos 
missa dissertatio oratio potius dicenda est quam epistola.” Yet 
the writer is not addressing an ideal public; he is not composing 
a treatise for Christendom at large. It is really unreal to ex- 
plain away passages like 514 10%! 124f and 13! as rhetorical 
abstractions. | 

II pds “EBpatous was the work of a didacKxados, who knew how 
to deliver a Adyos wapaxAjocews. Parts of it probably represent 
what he had used in preaching already (e.g. 3"). But, while it 
has sometimes the tone of sermon notes written out, it is not a 


1 Ep. Barnabas begins with dde\gpol, ottrws Set Huds Ppovety epi Incod 
Xpicrot ws wept Beod, etc. ; 2 Clement starts with a greeting, xalpere, viol 
xal Ouyarépes, év dvduart xuplov Tov dyarijoavros Huds év elphry. 


- 


INTRODUCTION xxix 


sermon in the air. To strike out 131% 2224 or 131-7. 16-19. 22f. 
(Torrey)! does not reduce it from a letter or epistle to a sermon 
like 2 Clement. Thus, e¢.g., a phrase like 11%? (see note) is as 
intelligible in a written work as in a spoken address. It is only 
by emptying passages like 51!f and 10%! of their full meaning 
that anyone can speak of the writer as composing a sermon at 
large or for an ideal public. Part of the force of 51", ¢.., is due 
to the fact that the writer is dealing with a real situation, pleading 
that in what he is going to say he is not writing simply to display 
his own talent or to please himself, but for the serious, urgent 
need of his readers. ‘They do not deserve what he is going to 
give them. But he will give it! A thoroughly pastoral touch, 
which is lost. by being turned into a rhetorical excuse for de- 
ploying some favourite ideas of his own. According to Wrede, 
the author wrote in 13!%1® on the basis of (Philem 2%) 2 Co 
r11. 12 to make it appear as though Paul was the author, and then 
added 13? on the basis of Ph 21% 23.24; but why he should mix 
up these reminiscences, which, according to Wrede, are contra- 
dictory, it is difficult to see. Had he wished to put a Pauline 
colour into the closing paragraphs, he would surely have done 
it in a lucid, coherent fashion, instead of leaving the supposed 
allusions to Paul’s Roman imprisonment so enigmatic. But,though 
Wrede thinks that the hypothesis of a pseudonymous conclusion 
is the only way of. explaining the phenomena of ch. 13, he agrees 
that to excise it entirely is out of the question. Neither the 
style nor the contents justify such a radical theory,? except on 
the untenable hypothesis that 1-12 is a pure treatise... The 
analogies of a doxology being followed by personal matter (e.g. 
2 Ti 418, 1 P 4" etc.) tell against the idea that Hpds “EBpatous 
must have ended with 137!, and much less could it have ended 
with 13!7. To assume that the writer suddenly bethought him, 
at the end, of giving a Pauline appearance to what he had 
written, and that he therefore added 13%, is to credit him with 
too little ability. Had he wished to convey this impression, he 
would certainly have gone further and made changes in the 
earlier part. Nor is it likely that anyone added the closing 
verses in order to facilitate its entrance into the NT canon by 
bringing it into line with the other epistles. The canon was 
drawn up for worship, and if [pos “Efpatous was originally a 
discourse, it seems very unlikely that anyone would have gone 

1 To excise 13!*7 as a ‘‘formless jumble of rather commonplace admoni- 
tions” is a singular misjudgment. 

2 The linguistic proof is cogently led by C. R. Williams in the Journal 
of Biblical Literature (1911), pp. 129-136, who shows that the alleged 
special parallels between He 13 and Paul are neither so numerous nor so 


significant as is commonly supposed, and that the only fair explanation of 
He 13 as a whole is that it was written to accompany I-12. 


XXX THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS 


out of his way, on this occasion, to add some enigmatic personal 
references. In short, while IIpos “EB8patovs betrays here and 
there the interests and methods of an effective preacher, the 
epistolary form is not a piece of literary fiction; still- less is it. 
due (in ch. 13) to some later hand. It is hardly too much to 
say that the various theories about the retouching of the 13th 
chapter of IIpds ‘EBpaiovs are as valuable, from the standpoint 
of literary criticism, as Macaulay’s unhesitating belief that Dr. 
Johnson had revised and retouched Ceez/za. 


§ 2. THE ReELiGcious IDEAs. 


In addition to the text-books on NT theology, consult Riehm’s Lehrbegrzf 
des Hebrierbriefs* (1867), W. Milligan’s Ascension and Heavenly Priesthood 
of our Lord (1891), Ménégoz’s La /héologie de [ Epitre aux Hébreux (1894), 
A. Seeberg’s Der Tod Christi (1895), A. B. Bruce’s The Epistle to the 
Hebrews (1899), G. Milligan’s Zhe Theology of the Epistle to the Hebrews 
(1899), G. Vos on ‘‘The Priesthood of Christ in Hebrews” (rznceton 
Theological Review, 1907, pp. 423f., 579 f.), Du Bose’s Aighpriesthood and 
Sacrifice (1908), A. Nairne’s Zhe Epistle of Priesthood (1913), H. L. 
MacNeill’s Christology of the Epistle to the Hebrews (1914), H. A. A. 
Kennedy’s Theology of the Epistles (1919, pp. 182-221), and E. F. Scott’s 
The Epistle to the Hebrews (1922). 


Many readers who are not children will understand what Mr 
Edmund Gosse in Father and Son (pp. 89 f.) describes, in telling 
how his father read aloud to him the epistle. ‘‘ The extraordinary 
beauty of the language—for instance, the matchless cadences and 
images of the first chapter—made a certain impression upon my 
imagination, and were (I think) my earliest initiation into the 
magic of literature. I was incapable of defining what I felt, but 
I certainly had a grip in the throat, which was in its essence a 
purely aesthetic emotion, when my father read, in his pure, large, 
ringing voice, such passages as ‘The heavens are the work of 
Thy hands. They shall perish, but Thou remainest, and they 
shall all wax old as doth a garment, and as a vesture shalt Thou 
fold them up, and they shall be changed ; but Thou art the same, 
and Thy years shall not fail.’ But the dialectic parts of the 
epistle puzzled and confused me. Such metaphysical ideas as 
‘laying again the foundation of repentance from dead works’ 
and ‘crucifying the Son of God ‘afresh’ were not successfully 
brought down to the level of my understanding. . . . The 
melodious language, the divine forensic audacities, the magnifi- 
cent ebb and flow of argument which make the Epistle to the 
Hebrews such a miracle, were far beyond my reach, and they 
only bewildered me.” They become less bewildering when they 
are viewed in the right perspective. The clue to them lies in the 


INTRODUCTION XXxl 


philosophical idea which dominates the outlook of the writer, and 
in the symbolism which, linked to this idea, embodied his 
characteristic conceptions of religion. We might almost say that, 
next to the deflecting influence of the tradition which identified 
our epistle with the Pauline scheme of thought and thereby 
missed its original and independent contribution to early Christi- 
anity, nothing has so handicapped its appeal as the later use of it 
in dogmatic theology. While the author of IIpos “Efpa‘ous often 
turned the literal into the figurative, his theological interpreters 
have been as often engaged in turning the figurative expressions 
of the epistle into what was literal. A due appreciation of 
the symbolism has been the slow gain of the historical method 
as applied to the classics of primitive Christianity. There is 
no consistent symbolism, indeed, not even in the case of the 
dpxepevs ; in the nature of the case, there could not be. But 
symbolism there is, and symbolism of a unique kind. 


(i.) 

The author writes from a religious philosophy of his own— 
that is, of his own among the NT writers. The philosophical 
element in his view of the world and God is fundamentally 
Platonic. Like Philo and the author of Wisdon, he interprets 
the past and the present alike in terms of the old theory (cp. on 
85 10!) that the phenomenal is but an imperfect, shadowy trans- 
cript of what is eternal and real. He applies this principle to the 
past. What was all the Levitical cultus in bygone days but a 
faint copy of the celestial archetype, a copy that suggested by its 
very imperfections the future and final realization? In such 
arguments (chs. 7-10) he means to declare “that Christianity 
is eternal, just as it shall be everlasting, and that all else is only 
this, that the true heavenly things of which it consists thrust 
themselves forward on to this bank and shoal of time, and took 
cosmical embodiment, in order to suggest their coming ever- 
lasting manifestation.” 1 The idea that the seen and material is 
but a poor, provisional replica of the unseen and real order of 
things (ra éroupavia, Ta ev Tots Ovpavots, TA 1.7) TaAEvdpeva), pervades 
IIpos “EBpavovs. Thus faith (111%) means the conviction, the 
practical realization, of this world of realities, not only the belief 
that the universe does not arise out of mere dawodpeva, but the 
conviction that life must be ordered, at all costs, by a vision of 
the unseen, or by obedience to a Voice unheard by any outward 
ear. Similarly the outward priest, sanctuary, and sacrifices of 
the ancient cultus were merely the shadowy copy of the real, as 
manifested in Jesus with his self-sacrifice, his death being, as 

1 A. B. Davidson, Biblical and Literary Essays (p. 317). 


XXXII THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS 


Sabatier says, ‘‘une fonction sacerdotale, un acte transcendant 
de purification rituelle, accompli hors de l’humanité” (Za Doctrine 
de  Expiation, p. 37). Such is the philosophical strain which 
permeates Ipos ‘EBpafovs. The idea of heavenly counterparts is 
not, of course, confined to Platonism; it is Sumerian, in one of 
its roots (cp. on 85), and it had already entered apocalyptic. 
But our author derives it from his Alexandrian religious philo- 
sophy (transmuting the xdopos vonrds into the more vivid and 
devotional figures of an olxos or wéAts Geot, a watpis or even a 
oxnvy addynOwy), just as elsewhere he freely uses Aristotelian ideas 
like that of the réAos or final end, with its reAciwous or sequence of 
growth, and shows familiarity with the idea of the eés (514). The 
teXeiwors (See on 5°) idea is of special importance, as it denotes 
for men the work of Christ in putting them into their proper 
status towards God (see on 21°). ‘By a single offering he has 
made the sanctified perfect for all time” (rereAciwxey, 10!*), the - 
offering or wpoogopa being himself, and the ‘“‘ perfecting” being 
the act of putting the People into their true and final relation 
towards God. This the Law, with its outward organization of 
priests and animal sacrifices, could never do; “as the Law has a 
mere shadow of the bliss that is to be, instead of representing 
the reality of that bliss (viz. the ‘perfect’ relationship between 
God and men), it can never perfect those who draw near ” (10%). 
This gives us the focus for viewing the detailed comparison 
between the levitical sacrifices and priests on the one hand and 
the kpeirrwy Jesus. ‘You see in your bible,” the writer argues, 
‘“‘the elaborate system of ritual which was once organized for the 
forgiveness of sins and the access of the people to God. All 
this was merely provisional and ineffective, a shadow of the 
Reality which already existed in the mind of God, and which is 
now ours in the sacrifice of Jesus.” Even the fanciful argument 
from the priesthood of Melchizedek (620—7!”)—fanciful to us, but 
forcible then—swings from this conception. What the author 
seeks to do is not to prove that there had been from the first a 
natural or real priesthood, superior to the levitical, a priesthood 
fulfilled in Christ. His aim primarily is to discredit the levitical 
priesthood of bygone days; it was anticipated in the divine 
order by that of Melchizedek, he shows, using a chronological 
argument resembling that of Paul in Gal 3%, on the principle 
that what is prior is superior. But what leads him to elaborate 
specially the Melchizedek priesthood is that it had already played 
an important role in Jewish speculation in connexion with the 
messianic hope. Philo had already identified Melchizedek out- 
right with the Logos or possibly even with the messiah. Whether 
the author of IIpos “Efpadous intends to contradict Philo or not, 
he takes a different line, falling back upon his favourite psalm, 


INTRODUCTION XXXII] 


the r1roth, which in the Greek version, the only one known to 
him, had put forward not only the belief that messiah was tepeis «is 
Tov alava Kata tHv Tag MeAxXioédex, but the Alexandrian belief 
in the pre-existence of messiah (v.3 ék yaorpds mpd éwoddpov 
efeyevvnod oe). Here then, by Alexandrian methods of exegesis, 
in the pentateuch text combined with the psalm, he found 
scripture proof of an original priesthood which was not levitical, 
not transferable, and permanent. This priesthood of Melchize- 
dek was, of course, not quite a perfect type of Christ’s, for it 
did not include any sacrifice, but, as resting on personality, 
not on heredity, it did typify, he held, that eternal priesthood of 
the Christ which was to supersede the levitical, for all the ancient 
prestige of the latter. As this prestige was wholly biblical for 
the writer and his readers, so it was essential that the disproof of 
its validity should be biblical also. Though he never uses either 
the idea of Melchizedek offering bread and wine to typify the 
elements in the eucharist, in spite of the fact that Philo once 
allegorized this trait (de Leg. Alleg. iil. 25), or the idea of 
Melchizedek being uncircumcised (as he would have done, had 
he been seriously arguing with people who were in danger of 
relapsing into contemporary Judaism), he does seem to glance 
at the combination of the sacerdotal and the royal functions. 
Like Philo, though more fully, he notices the religious signi- 
ficance of the etymology ‘king of righteousness” and “ king of 
peace,” the reason being that throughout his argument he 
endeavours repeatedly to preserve something of the primitive 
view of Jesus as messianic king, particularly because the idea of 
the divine BactAeia plays next to no part in his scheme of 
thought. Sometimes the combination of the sacerdotal and 
royal metaphors is incongruous enough, although it is not 
unimpressive (¢g. 101% 18), Primarily it is a survival of the 
older militant messianic category which is relevant in the first 
chapter (see 1°), but out of place in the argument from the 
priesthood ; the reference is really due to the desire to reaffirm 
the absolute significance of Christ’s work, and by way of anticipa- 
tion he sounds this note even in 71%. Later on, it opens up 
into an interesting instance of his relation to the primitive 
eschatology. To his mind, trained in the Alexandrian philo- 
sophy of religion, the present world of sense and time stands 
over against the world of reality, the former being merely 
the shadow and copy of the latter. There is an archetypal 


1 The writer is trying to express an idea which, as Prof. E. F. Scott 
argues (pp. 207f.), ‘‘ underlies all our modern thought—social and political 
as well as religious,” viz. that true authority is not prescriptive but personal ; 
‘the priesthood which can bring us nearer God must be one of inherent 
character and personality.” 


¢ 


XXXIV THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS 


order of things, eternal and divine, to which the mundane order 
but dimly corresponds, and only within this higher order, eternal 
and invisible, is access to God possible for man. On sucha 
view as this, which ultimately (see pp. xxxi—xxxli) goes back to - 
Platonic idealism, and which had been worked out by Philo, the 
real world is the transcendent order of things, which is the 
pattern for the phenomenal universe, so that to attain God man 
must pass from the lower and outward world of the senses to the 
inner. But how? Philo employed the Logos or Reason as 
the medium. Our author similarly holds that men must attain 
this higher world, but for him it is a oxyv7, a sanctuary, the real 
Presence of God, and it is entered not through ecstasy or mystic 
rapture, but through connexion with Jesus Christ, who has not 
only revealed that world but opened the way into it. The 
Presence of God is now attainable as it could not be under the 
outward cultus of the oxynv7 in the OT, for the complete sacrifice 
has been offered “in the realm of the spirit,” thus providing for 
the direct access of the people to their God. The full bliss of the 
fellowship is still in the future, indeed; it is not to be realized 
finally until Jesus returns for his people, for he is as yet only their 
mpodpopos (62°), The primitive eschatology required and received 
this admission from the writer, though it is hardly consonant 
with his deeper thought. And this is why he quotes for example 
the old words about Jesus waiting in heaven till his foes are 
crushed (10! 18), He is still near enough to the primitive period to 
share the forward look (see, e.g., 22 928 1087), and unlike Philo, he 
does not allow his religious idealism to evaporate his eschatology. 
But while this note of expectation is sounded now and then, it 
is held that Christians already experience the powers of the 
world to come. The new and final order has dawned ever since 
the sacrifice of Jesus was made, and the position of believers is 
guaranteed. ‘‘ You have come to mount Sion, the city of the 
living God.” ‘The entrance of Jesus has made a fresh, living 
way for us, which is here and now open. “ For all time he is 
able to save those who approach God through him, as he is 
always living to intercede on their behalf.” Christians enjoy the 
final status of relationship to God in the world of spirit and 
reality, in virtue of the final sacrifice offered by Jesus the Son. 


(1i.) ; 

What was this sacrifice? How did the writer understand it ? 
(a) The first thing to be said is that in his interpretation of the 
sacrifice of Jesus, he takes the piacular view. Calvin (Zms?tv. ii. 
15. 6) maintains that, as for the priesthood of Christ, “ finem et 
usum eius esse ut sit mediator purus omni macula, qui sanctitate 


INTRODUCTION XXXV 


sua Deum nobis conciliet. Sed quia aditum occupat justa 
maledictio, et Deus pro judicis officio nobis infensus est, ut nobis 
favorem comparet sacerdos ad placandam iram ipsius Dei, piacu- 
Jum intervenire necesse est. . . . Qua de re prolixe apostolus 
disputat in epistola ad Hebraeos a septimo capite fere ad finem 
usque decimi.” Matthew Arnold is not often found beside 
Calvin, but he shares this error. ‘‘’Turn it which way we will, 
the notion of appeasement of an offended God by vicarious 
sacrifice, which the Epistle to the Hebrews apparently sanctions, 
will never truly speak to the religious sense, or bear fruit for 
true religion ” (St. Paul and Protestantism, p.72). Arnold saves 
himself by the word “apparently,” but the truth is that this 
idea is not sanctioned by IIpds “Efpaiovs at all. The interpreta- 
tion of Calvin confuses Paul’s doctrine of expiation with the 
piacular view of our author. The entire group of ideas about 
the law, the curse, and the wrath of God is alien to IIpds 
“EBpatovs. The conception of God is indeed charged with 
wholesome awe (cp. on 1278 9); but although God is never 
called directly the Father of Christians, his attitude to men is 
one of grace, and the entire process of man’s approach is 
initiated by him (2° 137°), God’s wrath is reserved for the 
apostates (1079-31) ; it does not brood over unregenerate men, to 
be removed by Christ. Such a notion could hardly have occurred 
to a man with predilections for the typical significance of the OT 
ritual, in which the sacrifices were not intended to avert the 
wrath of God so much as to reassure the people from time to 
time that their relations with their God had not been interrupted. 
The function of Christ, according to our author, is not to appease 
the divine wrath (see on 2° 17), but to establish once and for all 
the direct fellowship of God with his people, and a picturesque 
archaic phrase like that in 12%4 about the aiva pavricpod cannot 
be pressed into the doctrine that Jesus by his sacrifice averted or 
averts the just anger of God. On the other hand, while the 
author knows the primitive Christian idea of God’s fatherhood, 
it is not in such terms that he expresses his own conception of 
God. Philo (De Exsecrationibus, 9) describes how the Jews in 
the diaspora will be encouraged to return to Israel and Israel’s 
God, particularly by his forgiving character (€vi peév cizeixeia Kal 
xXpyoTornte TOD TapakaAouvpevov cvyyvHOpNY TPO Tiywwpias del TLbeV- 
tos); the end of their approach to God, he adds, ovdev érepov 7 
evapeotety TO Jed Kabarep viovs matpi. But the author of IIpds 
“EBpaiovs lays no stress upon the Fatherhood of God for men; 
except in connexion with the discipline of suffering, he never 
alludes to the goodness of God as paternal, even for Christians, 
and indeed it is only in OT quotations that God is called even 
the Father of the Son (1° 5°). He avoids, even more strictly 


XXXV1 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS 


than Jesus, the use of love-language. The verb dyaray only 
occurs twice, both times in an OT citation ; dydazy is also used 
only twice, and never of man’s attitude towards God. ‘There is 
significance in such linguistic data; they corroborate the 
impression that the author takes a deep view (see on 12”) of the 
homage and awe due to God. Godly reverence, eiAdBeva (see 
on 5’), characterized Jesus in his human life, and it is to charac- 
terize Christians towards God, #.e. an awe which is devoid of 
anything like nervous fear, an ennobling sense of the greatness 
of God, but still a reverential awe. This is not incompatible 
with humble confidence or with a serious joy, with zappyoia 
(cp. on 316). Indeed “all deep joy has something of the awful 
in it,” as Carlyle says. "Exywpev xapw is the word of our author 
(1278); the standing attitude of Christians towards their God is 
one of profound thankfulness for his goodness to them. Only, 
it is to be accompanied pera edrAaPeias kat d€ouvs. We are to feel © 
absolutely secure under God’s will, whatever crises or catastrophes 
befall the universe, and the security is at once to thrill (see on 
212) and to subdue our minds. Hence, while God’s graciousness 
overcomes any anxiety in man, his sublimity is intended to 
elevate and purify human life by purging it of easy emotion and 
thin sentimentalism. This is not the primitive awe of religion 
before the terrors of the unknown supernatural; the author 
believes in the gracious, kindly nature of God (see on 219, also 
610 7316 etc.), but he has an instinctive horror of anything like a 
shallow levity. The tone of IIpds “EBpatovs resembles, indeed, 
that of 1 P 1!" (ei rarépa érixadetobe Tov arpoowmoAnTTws KpivovTa 
Kata TO ékdoTov épyov, év poBw Tov THs maporxias tudv ypdvov 
dvactpapyre) ; there may be irreverence in religion, not only in 
formal religion but for other reasons in spiritual religion. Yet 
the special aspect of our epistle is reflected in what Jesus once 
said to men tempted to hesitate and draw back in fear of 
suffering : “‘ I will show you whom to fear—fear Him who after 
He has killed has power to cast you into Gehenna. Yes, I tell 
you, fear Him” (Lk 12°). This illustrates the spirit and 
situation of IIpos “E@paiovs, where the writer warns his friends 
against apostasy by reminding them of 6 Oeds Zév and of the 
judgment. We might almost infer that in his mind the dominant 
conception is God regarded as transcendental, not with regard 
to creation but with regard to frail, faulty human nature. What, 
engrosses the writer is the need not so much of a medium 
between God and the material universe, as of a medium between 
his holiness and human sin (see on 1223), 

(4) As for the essence and idea of the sacrifice, while he 
refers to a number of OT sacrifices by way of illustration, his 
main analogy comes from the ritual of atonement-day in the 


INTRODUCTION XXXVil 


levitical code (Lv 16), where it was prescribed that once a year 
the highpriest was to enter the inner shrine by himself, the shrine 
within which stood the sacred box or ark symbolizing the divine 
Presence. The elaborate sacrifices of the day are only glanced 
at by our author. Thus he never alludes to the famous scape- 
goat, which bore away the sins of the people into the desert. 
All he mentions is the sacrifice of certain animals, as propitiation 
for the highpriest’s own sins and also for those of the nation. 
Carrying some blood of these animals, the priest was to smear 
the tAagryjpov or cover of the ark. This had a twofold object. 
(i) Blood was used to reconsecrate the sanctuary (Lv 161). 
This was a relic of the archaic idea that the life-bond between 
the god and his worshippers required to be renewed by sacred 
blood ; “the holiness of the altar is liable to be impaired, and 
requires to be refreshed by an application of holy blood.” ! 
Our author refers to this crude practice in 9%. But his 
dominant interest is in (ii) the action of the highpriest as he 
enters the inner shrine; it is not the reconsecration of the 
sanctuary with its altar, but the general atonement there made 
for the sins of the People, which engrosses him. The application 
of the victim’s blood to the tAaoryjpiov by the divinely appointed 
highpriest was believed to propitiate Yahweh by cleansing the 
People from the sins which might prevent him from dwelling 
any longer in the land or among the People. The annual 
ceremony was designed to ensure his Presence among them, ‘‘to 
enable the close relationship between Deity and man to continue 
undisturbed. The logical circle—that the atoning ceremonies 
were ordered by God to produce their effect upon himself—was 
necessarily unperceived by the priestly mind” (Montefiore, 
Fiibbert Lectures, p. 337). What the rite, as laid down in the 
bible, was intended to accomplish was simply, for the author of 
IIpos “EBpaiovs, to renew the life-bond between God and the 
People. ‘This sacrifice offered by the highpriest on atonement- 
day was the supreme, piacular action of the levitical cultus. 
Once a year it availed to wipe out the guilt of all sins, whatever 
their nature, ritual or moral, which interrupted the relationship 
between God and his People.? For it was a sacrifice designed 
for the entire People as the community of God. The blood of 
the victims was carried into the inner shrine, on behalf of the 
People outside the sanctuary; this the highpriest did for them, 
as he passed inside the curtain which shrouded the inner shrine. 
Also, in contrast to the usual custom, the flesh of the victims, 
instead of any part being eaten as a meal, was carried out and 
burned up. In all this the writer finds a richly symbolic 


1W, Robertson Smith, The Religion of the Semites (1907), pp. 408 f. 
2 Cp. Montefiore, of. czt., pp. 334f. 


XXXVill THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS 


meaning (9). Jesus was both highpriest and victim, as he 
died and passed inside the heavenly Presence of God to 
establish the life-bond between God and his People. Jesus did 
not need to sacrifice for himself. Jesus did not need to sacrifice 
himself more than once for the People. Jesus secured a 
forgiveness which the older animal sacrifices never won. And 
Jesus did not leave his People outside; he opened the way for 
them to enter God’s own presence after him, and in virtue of his 
self-sacrifice. So the author, from time to time, works out the 
details of the symbolism. He even uses the treatment of the 
victim’s remains to prove that Christians must be unworldly 
(13); but this is an after-thought, for his fundamental interest 
lies in the sacrificial suggestiveness of the atonement-day which, 
external and imperfect as its ritual was, adumbrated the reality 
which had been manifested in the sacrifice and ascension of 
Jesus. 
Yet this figurative category had its obvious drawbacks, two 
of which may be noted here. One (a) is, that it does not allow 
him to show how the sacrificial death of Jesus is connected with 
the inner renewal of the heart and the consequent access of 
man to God. He uses phrases like dyiafew (see on 214) and 
kadapi€ev and teAeoty (this term emphasizing more than the 
others the idea of completeness), but we can only deduce from 
occasional hints like 9!* what he meant by the efficacy of the 
sacrificial death. His ritualistic category assumed that such a 
sacrifice availed to reinstate the People before God (cp. on 9??), 
and this axiom sufficed for his Christian conviction that every- 
thing depended upon what Jesus is to God and to us—what he 
is, he is in virtue of what he did, of the sacrificial offering of 
himself. But the symbol or parable in the levitical cultus went 
no further. And it even tended to confuse the conception of 
what is symbolized, by its inadequacy; it necessarily separated 
priest and victim, and it suggested by its series of actions a time- 
element which is out of keeping with the eternal order. Hence 
the literal tendency in the interpretation of the sacrifice has led 
to confusion, as attempts have been made to express the con- 
tinuous, timeless efficacy of the sacrifice. That the death was 
a sacrifice, complete and final, is assumed (e.g. 727 g!4 1010. 12. 14), 
Yet language is used which has suggested that in the heavenly 
oxnvy this sacrifice is continually presented or offered (e.g. 7% 
and the vg. mistranslation of 101? ‘“‘hic autem unam pro peccatis 
offerens hostiam in sempiternum sedit”). The other drawback 
(4) is, that the idea of Jesus passing like the highpriest at once 
from the sacrifice into the inner sanctuary (ze. through the 
heavens into the Presence, 4'*) has prevented him from making 
use of the Resurrection (cp. also on 13). The heavenly sphere 


INTRODUCTION XXX1X 


of Jesus is so closely linked with his previous existence on earth, 
under the category of the sacrifice, that the author could not 
suggest an experience like the resurrection, which would not 
have tallied with this idea of continuity. 

On the other hand, the concentration of interest in the 
symbol on the sole personality of the priest and of the single 
sacrifice enabled him to voice what was his predominant belief 
about Jesus. How profoundly he was engrossed by the idea of 
Christ’s adequacy as mediator may be judged from his avoidance 
of some current religious beliefs about intercession. Over and 
again he comes to a point where contemporary opinions (with 
which he was quite familiar) suggested, e.g., the intercession of 
angels in heaven, or of departed saints on behalf of men on 
earth, ideas like the merits of the fathers or the atoning efficacy 
of martyrdom in the past, to facilitate the approach of sinful 
men to God (cp. on 114° 121’ 23. 24 etc.). These he deliberately 
ignores. In view of the single, sufficient sacrifice of Jesus, in 
the light of his eternally valid intercession, no supplementary 
aid was required. It is not accidental that such beliefs are left 
out of our author’s scheme of thought. It is a fresh proof of 
his genuinely primitive faith in Jesus as the one mediator. The 
ideas of the perfect Priest and the perfect Sacrifice are a theo- 
logical expression, in symbolic language, of what was vital to the 
classical piety of the early church; and apart from Paul no 
one set this out so cogently and clearly as the writer of IIpos 
‘EBpaiovs. 


(iii. ) 
Our modern symbolism does no sort of justice to the ancient 
idea of priesthood. Matthew Arnold says of Wordsworth: 


‘“He was a priest to us all, 
Of the wonder and bloom of the world, 
Which we saw with his eyes, and were glad.” 


That is, ‘‘ priest” means interpreter, one who introduces us to a 
deeper vision, one who, as we might put it, opens up to us a 
new world of ideas. Such is not the ultimate function of Christ 
as iepevs in our epistle. Dogmatic theology would prefer to 
call this the prophetic function of Christ, but the priestly office 
means mediation, not interpretation. ‘The function of the high- 
priest is to enter and to offer: eicepxeoOar and mpoodépew forming 
the complete action, and no distinction being drawn between the 
two, any more than between the terms “priest” and “high- 
priest.” 

The fundamental importance of this may be illustrated from 
the recourse made by Paul and by our author respectively to the 


xl THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS 


Jeremianic oracle of the new covenant or dta@yxn. Paul’s main 
interest in it lies in its prediction of the Spirit, as opposed to 
the Law. What appeals to Paul is the inward and direct intui- 
tion of God, which forms the burden of the oracle. But to our. 
author (87-13 1015-18) it is the last sentence of the oracle which 
is supreme, z.e. the remission of sins; ‘‘I will be merciful to their 
iniquities, and remember their sins no more.” He seizes the 
name and fact of a ‘‘new” covenant, as implying that the old 
was inadequate. But he continues: “If the blood of goats and 
bulls, and the ashes of a heifer, sprinkled on defiled persons, 
give them a holiness that bears on bodily purity, how much more 
will the blood of Christ, who in the spirit of the eternal offered 
himself as an unblemished sacrifice to God, cleanse your con- 
science from dead works to serve a living God? He mediates a 
new covenant for this reason, that those who have been called 
may obtain the eternal deliverance they have been promised, 
now that a death has occurred which redeems them from the 
transgressions involved in the first covenant” (9!%15), That is, 
the conclusion of Jeremiah’s oracle—that God will forgive and 
forget—is the real reason why our author quotes it. There can 
be no access without an amnesty for the past; the religious 
communion of the immediate future must be guaranteed by a 
sacrifice ratifying the pardon of God. 

This difference between Paul and our author is, of course, 
owing to the fact that for the latter the covenant! or law is sub- 
ordinated to the priesthood. Change the priesthood, says the 
writer, and zfso facto the law has to be changed too. The cove- 
nant is a relationship of God and men, arising out of grace, and 
inaugurated by some historic act; since its efficiency as an insti- 
tution for forgiveness and fellowship depends on the personality 
and standing of the priesthood, the appearance of Jesus as the 
absolute Priest does away with the inferior law. 

This brings us to the heart of the Christology, the sacrifice 
and priestly service of Christ as the mediator of this new cove- 
nant with its eternal fellowship. 

Men are sons of God, and their relation of confidence and 
access is based upon the function of the Son kar é&éxyv. The 
author shares with Paul the view that the Son is the Son before 
and during his incarnate life, and yet perhaps Son in a special 
sense in consequence of the resurrection—or rather, as our. 
author would have preferred to say, in consequence of the ascen- 
sion. ‘This may be the idea underneath the compressed clauses 
at the opening of the epistle (11°). ‘‘God has spoken to us by 


1 As Professor Kennedy points out, with real insight : ‘‘all the terms of 
the contrast which he works out are selected because of their relation to the 
covenant-conception ” (p. 201), 


INTRODUCTION xli 


a Son—a Son whom he appointed heir of the universe, as it 
was by him that he had created the world. He, reflecting God’s 
bright glory and stamped with God’s own character, sustains the 
universe by his word of power; when he had secured our 
purification from sins, he sat down at the right hand of the 
Majesty on high; and thus he is superior to the angels, as he 
has inherited a Name superior to theirs. For to what angel did 
God ever say— 


‘Thou art my Son, 
To-day have I become thy Father’?” 


(referring to the ancient notion that the king first became con- 
scious of his latent divine sonship at his accession to the throne). 
The name or dignity which Christ inherits, as the result of his 
redemptive work, is probably that of Son; as the following 
quotation from the OT psalm suggests, the resurrection or 
exaltation may mark, as it does for Paul, the fully operative 
sonship of Christ, the only way to inherit or possess the 
universe being to endure the suffering and death which purified 
human sin and led to the enthronement of Christ. Our author 
holds that this divine being was sent into the world because he 
was God's Son, and that he freely undertook his mission for 
God’s other sons on earth. 

The mission was a will of God which involved sacrifice. 
That is the point of the quotation (10%) from the goth psalm 
—not to prove that obedience to God was better than sacrifice, 
but to bring out the truth that God’s will required a higher kind 
of sacrifice than the levitical, namely, the personal, free self- 
sacrifice of Christ in the body. Even this is more than self- 
sacrifice in our modern sense of the term. It is “by this will,” 
the writer argues, that “‘ we are consecrated, because Jesus Christ 
once for all has offered up his body.” No doubt the offering is 
eternal, it is not confined to the historical act on Calvary. ‘‘He 
has entered heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God 
on our behalf” (974): ‘‘he is always living to make intercession 
for us” (77°). Still, the author is more realistic in expression than 
the tradition of the Zestament of Levi (3), which makes the 
angel of the Presence in the third heaven offer a spiritual and 
bloodless sacrifice to God in propitiation for the sins of ignorance 
committed by the righteous. Our author assigns entirely to Christ 
the intercessory functions which the piety of the later Judaism 
had already begun to divide among angels and departed saints, 
but he also makes the sacrifice of Jesus one of blood—a realism 
which was essential to his scheme of argument from the 
entrance of the OT high priest into the inner shrine. 

The superior or rather the absolute efficacy of the blood of 


xlii THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS 


Christ depends in turn on his absolute significance as the 
Son of God; it is his person and work which render his self- 
sacrifice valid and supreme. But this is asserted rather than 
explained. Indeed, it is asserted on the ground of a presupposi- 
tion which was assumed as axiomatic, namely, the impossibility 
of communion with God apart from blood shed in sacrifice 
(922). For example, when the writer encourages his readers by 
reminding them of their position (12%), that they ‘‘have come 
to Jesus the mediator of the new covenant and to the sprinkled 
blood whose message is nobler than Abel’s,” he does not mean 
to draw an antithesis between Abel’s blood as a cry for vengeance 
and Christ’s blood as a cry for intercession. The fundamental 
antithesis lies between exclusion and inclusion. Abel’s blood 
demanded the excommunication of the sinner, as an outcast 
from God’s presence; Christ’s blood draws the sinner near and 
ratifies the covenant. The author denies to the OT cultus of | 
sacrifice any such atoning value, but at the same time he reaffirms 
its basal principle, that blood in sacrifice is essential to communion 
with the deity. Blood offered in sacrifice does possess a religious 
efficacy, to expiate and purify. Without shedding of blood there 
is no remission. We ask, why? But the ancient world never 
dreamt of asking, why? What puzzles a modern was an axiom 
to the ancient. The argument of our epistle is pivoted on this 
postulate, and no attempt is made to rationalize it. - 

In the Law of Holiness, incorporated in Leviticus, there is 
indeed one incidental allusion to the rationalé of sacrifice or 
blood-expiation, when, in prohibiting the use of blood as a food, 
the taboo proceeds: ‘‘the life of the body is in the blood, and 
I have given it to you for the altar to make propitiation for 
yourselves, for the blood makes propitiation by means of the 
life” (ze. the life inherent in it). This is reflection on the 
meaning of sacrifice, but it does not carry us very far, for it only 
explains the piacular efficacy of blood by its mysterious potency 
of life. Semitic scholars warn us against finding in these words 
(Lv 171!) either the popular idea of the substitution of the victim 
for the sinner, or even the theory that the essential thing in 
sacrifice is the offering of a life to God. As far as the Hebrew 
text goes, this may be correct. But the former idea soon became 
attached to the verse, as we see from the LXX—ro yap aia 
avrod dvTl THs Wuxns éfiAdcerat. This view does not seem to be 
common in later Jewish thought, though it was corroborated by 
the expiatory value attached to the death of the martyrs (e.g. 
4 Mac 172"), It is in this later world, however, rather than in 
the primitive world of Leviticus, that the atmosphere of the idea 
of IIpds “EBpaiovs is to be sought, the idea that because Jesus 
was what he was, his death has such an atoning significance as 


INTRODUCTION xlii 


to inaugurate a new and final relation between God and men, 
the idea that his blood purifies the conscience because it is 42s 
blood, the blood of the sinless Christ, who is both the priest 
and the sacrifice. When the author writes that Christ ‘fin the 
spirit of the eternal” (9!*) offered himself as an unblemished 
sacrifice to God, he has in mind the contrast between the annual 
sacrifice on the day of atonement and the sacrifice of Christ 
which never needed to be repeated, because it had been offered 
in the spirit and—as we might say—in the eternal order of 
things. It was a sacrifice bound up with his death in history, 
but it belonged essentially to the higher order of absolute reality. 
The writer breathed the Philonic atmosphere in which the 
eternal Now over-shadowed the things of space and time (see 
on 1°), but he knew this sacrifice had taken place on the cross, 
and his problem was one which never confronted Philo, the 
problem which we moderns have to face in the question: How 
can a single historical fact possess a timeless significance? How 
can Christianity claim to be final, on the basis of a specific 
revelation in history? Our author answered this problem in his 
own way for his own day. 


(iv.) 


For him religion is specially fellowship with God on the 
basis of forgiveness. He never uses the ordinary term kowvwvia, 
however, in this sense. It is access to God on the part of 
worshippers that is central to his mind; that is, he conceives 
religion as worship, as the approach of the human soul to the 
divine Presence, and Christianity is the religion which is religion 
since it mediates this access and thereby secures the immediate 
consciousness of God for man. Or, as he would prefer to say, 
the revelation of God in Jesus has won this right for man as it 
could not be won before. For, from the first, there has been a 
People of God seeking, and to a certain extent enjoying, this 
access. God has ever been revealing himself to them, so far as 
was possible. But now in Jesus the final revelation has come 
which supersedes all that went before in Israel. The writer 
never contemplates any other line of revelation; outside Israel 
of old he never looks. It is enough for him that the worship of 
the OT implied a revelation which was meant to elicit faith, 
especially through the sacrificial cultus, and that the imperfec- 
tions of that revelation have now been disclosed and superseded 
by the revelation in Jesus the Son. Faith in this revelation is in 
one aspect belief (42%). Indeed he describes faith simply as the 
conviction of the unseen world, the assurance that God has 
spoken and that he will make his word good, if men rely upon 


xliv THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS 


it; he who draws near to God must believe that he exists and 
that he does reward those who seek him (11°), Faith of this 
noble kind, in spite of appearances to the contrary, has always 
characterized the People. Our author rejoices to trace it at 
work long before Jesus came, and he insists that it is the saving 
power still, a faith which in some aspects is indistinguishable 
from hope, since it inspires the soul to act and suffer in the 
conviction that God is real and sure to reward loyalty in the 
next world, if not in the present. Such faith characterized Jesus 
himself (2!3 127). It is belief in God as trustworthy, amid all 
the shows and changes of life, an inward conviction that, when 
he has spoken, the one thing for a man to do is to hold to 
that word and to obey it at all costs. This is the conception 
of faith in the early and the later sections of the writing (3 
108-122), The difference that Jesus has made—for the writer 
seems to realize that there is a difference between the primitive © 
faith and the faith of those who are living after the revelation in 
Jesus—is this, that the assurance of faith has now become far 
more real than it was. Though even now believers have to 
await the full measure of their reward, though faith still is hope 
to some extent, yet the full realization of the fellowship with 
God which is the supreme object of faith has been now made 
through Jesus.. In two ways. (i) For faith Jesus is the inspiring 
example; he is the great Believer who has shown in his own 
life on earth the possibilities of faith. In order to understand 
what faith is, we must look to Jesus above all, to see how faith 
begins and continues and ends. But (ii) Jesus has not only 
preceded us on the line of faith; he has by his sacrifice made 
our access to God direct and real, as it never could be before. 
Hence the writer can say, ‘‘let us draw near with a full assurance 
of faith and a true heart, in absolute assurance of faith” since 
‘‘we have a great Priest over the house of God.” “We have 
confidence to enter the holy Presence in virtue of the blood of 
Jesus.” He does not make Jesus the object of faith as Paul 
does, but he argues that only the sacrifice of Jesus opens the 
way into the presence of God for sinful men. 

This is the argument of the central part of the writing 
(chs. 7-10). Religion is worship, and worship implies sacrifice ; 
there is no access for man to God without sacrifice, and no 


1 “Tt was by no divine magic, no mere ‘breath, turn of eye, wave of 
hand,’ that he ‘joined issue with death,’ but by the power of that genuinely 
human faith which had inspired others in the past” (MacNeill, p. 26). 
Bousset’s denial of this (Zheol. Literaturzettung, 1915, p. 431f.: ‘‘man 
wird bei dem Jesus d. Hebrierbriefe so wenig wie bei dem paulinischen noch 
im strengen Sinne von einem subjectivem Glauben Jesu reden konnen’”’) is as 
incomprehehsible as his desperate effort to explain He 57-!° from the fixed 
ideas of the mystery-religions. 


INTRODUCTION xlv 


religion without a priest (see on 7!!). The relations between 
God and his People from the first! have been on the basis of 
sacrifice, as the bible shows, and the new revelation in Jesus 
simply changes the old sacrificial order with its priesthood for 
another. The writer starts from a profound sense of sin, as an 
interruption of fellowship between God and man. He thoroughly 
sympathizes with the instinct which underlay the ancient practice 
of sacrifice, that fellowship with God is not a matter of course, 
that God is accessible and yet difficult of access, and that human 
nature cannot find its way unaided into his presence. Thus he 
quotes the goth psalm (see p. xli), not to prove that God’s will 
is fellowship, and that to do the will of God is enough for man, 
apart from any sacrifice, but to illustrate the truth that the will 
of God does require a sacrifice, not simply the ethical obedience 
of man, but the self-sacrifice with which Jesus offered himself 
freely, the perfect victim and the perfect priest. All men now 
have to do is to avail themselves of his sacrifice in order to 
enjoy access to God in the fullest sense of the term. ‘“ Having 
a great Highpriest who has passed through the heavens, let us 
draw near.” 

The conception of religion as devotion or worship covers a 
wide range in IIpos “Efpaiovs. It helps to explain, for example 
(see above, p. xxxvili), why the writer represents Jesus after death 
not as being raised from the dead, but as passing through the 
heavens into the inner Presence or sanctuary of God with the 
sacrifice of his blood (414 9144), It accounts for the elaboration 
of a detail like that of 978, and, what is much more important, it 
explains the “sacrificial” delineation of the Christian life. In 
this éAnOwn oxynvy (82), of God’s own making, with its Odvovac- 
typtov (13!°), Christians worship God (Aarpevev, gl 1278 13!) ; 
their devotion to him is expressed by the faith and loyalty which 
detach them from this world (13!%-!4) and enable them to live 
and move under the inspiration of the upper world; indeed their 
ethical life of thanksgiving (see on 2!) and beneficence is a 
sacrifice by which they honour and worship God (13) 18), a 
sacrifice presented to God by their dépyepeds Jesus. The writer 
never suggests that the worship-regulations of the outworn cultus 
are to be reproduced in any rites of the church on earth; he 
never dreamed of this, any more than of the 7yovpevor being 
called “priests.” The essence of priesthood, viz. the mediation 
of approach to God, had been absolutely fulfilled in Jesus, and 
in one sense all believers were enabled to follow him into the 
inner oxnvy, where they worshipped their God as the priests of 
old had done in their oxynvy, and as the People of old had never 


1 7.e. from the inauguration of the 6:a07)«n at Sinai, though he notes that 
even earlier there was sacrifice offered (11%). 


xlvi THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS 


been able to do except through the highpriest as their represen- 
tative and proxy. But, while the worship-idea is drawn out 
to describe Christians, in [pds “EGpacovs its primary element 
is that of the eternal function of Christ as dpxvepeds in the 
heavenly oxnvy. 


(v.) 


Symbolism alters as the ages pass. The picture-language in 
which one age expresses its mental or religious conceptions 
often ceases to be intelligible or attractive to later generations, 
because the civic, ritual, or economic conditions of life which had 
originally suggested it have disappeared or changed their form. 
This well-known principle applies especially to the language of 
religion, and it is one reason why some of the arguments in IIpds 
“EBpatovs are so difficult for the modern mind to follow. There 
are other reasons, no doubt. The exegetical methods which the 
author took over from the Alexandrian school are not ours. 
Besides, historical criticism has rendered it hard for us moderns 
to appreciate the naive use of the OT which prevails in some 
sections of IIpds ‘EBpaiovs. But, above all, the sacrificial analogies 
are a stumbling-block, for we have nothing to correspond to what 
an ancient understood by a “priest” and sacrifice. Dryden was 
not poetic when he translated Vergil’s “‘sacerdos” in the third 
Georgic (489) by “holy butcher,” but the phrase had its truth. 
The business of a priest was often that of a butcher; blood 
flowed, blood was splashed about. It was in terms of such 
beliefs and practices that the author of IIpos “E@paiovs argued, 
rising above them to the spiritual conception of the self-sacrifice 
of Jesus, but nevertheless starting from them as axiomatic. The 
duty of the modern mind is to understand, in the first place, 
how he came by these notions; and, in the second place, what 
he intended to convey by the use of such symbolic terms as 
“blood,” ‘‘ highpriest,” and ‘‘ sacrifice.” 

The striking idea of Christ as the eternal dpytepevs, by whom 
the access of man to God is finally and fully assured, may have 
been a flash of inspiration, one of the notes of originality and 
insight which mark the writer’s treatment and restatement of the 
faith. But originality is not depreciated by the effort to trace 
anticipations. What led him to this view? After all, the most 
brilliant flashes depend upon an atmosphere already prepared, 
for them. They are struck out of something. In this case, it is 
not enough to say that the conception was merely the transfer- 
ence to Jesus of the Philonic predicates of the Logos, or the 
result of a bible-reading in the pentateuch. In the pentateuch 
the writer found proofs of what he brought to it, and the argu- 
ments in chs. 7-10 really buttress ideas built on other foundations. 


INTRODUCTION xl vii 


(2) Once the conception of a heavenly sanctuary became 
current, the notion of a heavenly dpxtepevs would not be far-fetched 
for a writer like this. Philo had, indeed, not only spoken of the 
Logos as a highpriest, in a metaphorical sense, z.e. as mediating 
metaphysically and psychologically the relations between the 
worlds of thought and sense, but in an allegorical fashion spoken 
of “two temples belonging to God, one being the world in which 
the highpriest is his own Son, the Logos, the other being the 
rational soul” (de Somnits, i. 37). Our writer is much less 
abstract. Like the author of the Apocalypse (see on 41°), he 
thinks of heaven in royal and ritual imagery as well as in civic, 
but it is the ritual symbolism which is more prominent. During 
the second century B.c. the ideas of a heavenly sanctuary and 
a heavenly altar became current in apocalyptic piety, partly owing 
to the idealistic and yet realistic conception (see on 8°) that in 
heaven the true originals were preserved, the material altar and 
sanctuary being, like the earthly Jerusalem, inferior representations 
of transcendent realities. From this it was a natural develop- 
ment to work out the idea of a heavenly highpriest. By 
“natural” I do not mean to undervalue the poetical and re- 
ligious originality of the writer of Ipods “E@paiovs. The author 
of the Apocalypse of John, for example, fails to reach this idea, 
and even in the enigmatic passage in the vision and confession of 
Levi (Zestaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, Test. Levi 5), where 
the seer tells us, “I saw the holy temple, and upon a throne of 
glory the Most High. And he said to me, Levi, I have given 
thee the blessings of priesthood until I come and sojourn in the 
midst of Israel”—-even here, though the levitical priesthood, as 
in our epistle, is only a temporary substitute for the presence of 
God, the heavenly sanctuary has no highpriest. Nevertheless 
it was the idea of the heavenly sanctuary which held one 
germ of the idea of the heavenly highpriest for the author of 
IIpos “EBpaious, as he desired to express the fundamental signifi- 
cance of Jesus for his faith. 

(6) Another factor was the speculations of Philo about the 
Logos as highpriest (de Migrat. Abrah. 102, de Fug. 108 ff.), 
though the priestly mediation there is mainly between man and 
the upper world of ideas. The Logos or Reason is not only the 
means of creating the material cosmos after the pattern of the 
first and real world, but inherent in it, enabling human creatures 
to apprehend the invisible. This is Philo’s primary use of the 
metaphor. It is philosophical rather than religious. Yet the 
increased prestige of the highpriest in the later Judaism prompted 
him to apply to the Logos functions which resemble intercession 
as well as interpretation. Vague as they are, they were familiar 
to the author of our epistle, and it is probable that they helped 


xlvili THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS 


to fashion his expression of the eternal significance of Jesus as 
the mediator between man and God. ‘The Logos as highpriest, 
says Philo (de Soman. ii. 28), for example, is not only duwpos, 
6AGKAnpos, but peOdpids Tis Deo’ <Kat avOpHrov> Pivots, TOD pev 
éAdrrwv, avOpwrov O€ Kkpeitrwy. Then he quotes the LXX of Lv 
1617, The original says that no man is to be with the highpriest 
when he enters the inner shrine, but the Greek version runs, 6rav 
cicin eis 7a Gyia. TH dyiwv 6 apxLEpeds, dvVOpwros odk Eorat, and Philo 
dwells on the literal, wrong sense of the last three words, as if 
they meant “the highpriest is not to be a man.” ‘“ What will 
he be, if he is not a man? God? I would not say that (ov« 
dv eto). . . . Nor yet is he man, but he touches both extremes 
(éxatépwv Tav adkpwy, os av Bacews Kal Kepadns, épamrdevos).” 
Later (zd. 34) he remarks, “‘if at that time he is not a man, it 
is clear he is not God either, but a minister (Aecrovpyds Geod) of 
God, belonging to creation in his mortal nature and to the 
uncreated world in his immortal nature.” Similarly he pleads, 
in the de sacerdot. 12, that the function of the highpriest was to 
mediate between God and man, iva 614 pécov tivds avOpwrot pev 
iAdoxwvtat Oedv, Peds S& Tas xapiras avOpwros trodiakdve tivi 
Xpwpevos dpéyn Kat xopnyy. Here we may feel vibrating a need of 
intercession, even although the idea is still somewhat theosophic. 

(c) A third basis for the conception of Christ’s priesthood lay 
in the combination of messianic and sacerdotal functions which 
is reflected in the 110th psalm (see above, p. xxxiii), which in the 
Testaments of the Patriarchs (Reuben 68) is actually applied to 
Hyrcanus the Maccabean priest-king, while in the Zest. Levi (18) 
functions which are messianic in all but name are ascribed to a 
new priest, with more spiritual insight than in the psalm itself. 
The curious thing, however, is that this Priest discharges no 
sacerdotal functions. ‘The hymn describes his divine attestation 
and consecration—‘“‘and in his priesthood shall sin come to an 
end, and he shall open the gates of paradise and shall remove 
the threatening sword against Adam.” That is all. Probably 
the passing phase of expectation, that a messiah would arise from 
the sacerdotal Maccabees, accounts for such a fusion of messiah 
and priest. In any case its influence was not wide. Still, the 
anticipation is not unimportant for the thought of IIpds “EBpaious, 
which rests so much upon the mystical significance of that psalm. 
Paul had seen the fulfilment of Ps rro! in the final triumph 
of Christ as messiah over his foes (1 Co 157 % det yap airov 
Baorevew axpis od 64 ravtas Tods éxOpovs brd Tots wddas avrod). 
But meantime Christ was in living touch with his church on earth, 
and Paul can even speak, in a glowing outburst, of his effective 
intercession (Ro 8% 6s Kat évrvyyaver izép jpov). This is at 
least the idea of the highpriesthood of Christ, in almost every- 


INTRODUCTION xlix 


thing except name, though Paul says as much of the Spirit (Ro 
827 Kara Oeov evtvyxave t7rép ayiwv). Later, in the Fourth Gospel, 
a similar thought reappears; Christ is represented in priestly 
metaphor as interceding for his People (171£), and the phrases 
(1717-19) about Jesus consecrating himself (as priest and victim) 
that thereby his disciples may be “consecrated” év 77) dAnOela (2.6. 
in the sphere of Reality), indicate a use of ayidé€ev which ex- 
presses one of the central ideas of IIpds “EBpaiovs. But in the 
latter writing the idea is explicit and elaborate, as it is nowhere 
else in the NT, and explicit on the basis of a later line in the 
rroth psalm, which Paul ignored. Our author also knew and 
used the earlier couplet (101%), but he draws his cardinal argu- 
ment from v.* od ef tepeds eis aidva kara tHy TagW MeAxio eek, 


(vi.) 


There is a partial anticipation of all this in the Enochic 
conception of the Son of Man. No doubt, as Volz warns us 
( Jidische Eschatologie, p. 9°), we must not read too much into 
such apocalyptic phrases, since the Son of Man is an x quantity 
of personal value in the age of expected bliss and salvation. 
Still, the pre-existent messiah there is Son of Man as transcen- 
dent and in some sense as human; he must be human, ‘ Man,”’ 
in order to help men, and he must be transcendent in order to 
be a deliverer or redeemer. But the author of pds ‘Efpaiovs, 
like Paul, significantly avoids ‘the term Son of Man, even in 25; 
and although he has these two ideas of human sympathy and of 
transcendency in close connexion, he derives them from his 
meditation upon the real Jesus ultimately, not from any apoca- 
lyptic speculations. What he meant by the term ‘‘Son of God” 
is not quite plain. Philo had regarded the Logos as pre- 
existent and as active in the history of the people, and so he 
regards Christ ; but while it seems clear (see on 5°) that Christ 
is priest for him because he was already Son, the further ques- 
tions, when did he become priest? and how is the Sonship 
compatible with the earthly lifep—these are problems which 
remain unsolved. The interpretation of the function of Jesus 
through the phrase in the 2nd psalm (see on 1°) hardly clears up 
the matter any more than in the case of Justin Martyr (Dad. 88). 
Later on, Hippolytus, or whoever wrote the homily appended 
(chs. xi.—xii.) to the Zzst. Diognet., faced the problem more 
boldly and beautifully by arguing that ‘the Word was from 
the very beginning, appeared new, was proved to be old, and 
is ever young as he is born in the hearts of the saints. He 
is the eternal One, who to-day was accounted Son” (6 o7pepov 
vids AoyoGeis, 11°). Here “to-day” refers to the Christian era ; 

a 


| THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS 


evidently the problem left by the author of IIpds “EBpaious, with 
his mystical, timeless use of the 2nd psalm, was now being felt 
as a theological difficulty. But this is no clue to how he himself 
took the reference. ‘There is a large section in his thought upon 
Christ as the eternal, transcendental Son which remains obscure 
to us, and which perhaps was indefinite to himself. He took over 
the idea of the divine Sonship from the primitive church, seized 
upon it to interpret the sufferings and sacrificial function of Jesus 
as well as his eternal value, and linked it to the notion of the 
highpriesthood ; but he does not succeed in harmonizing its 
implications about the incarnate life with his special yvaous of 
the eternal Son within the higher sphere of divine realities. 

At the same time there seems no hiatus! between the meta- 
physical and the historical in the writer’s conception of Jesus, no 
unreconciled dualism between the speculative reconstruction and 
the historical tradition. In IIpds ‘E8paiovs we have the ordinary | 
primitive starting-point, how could a divine, reigning Christ ever 
have become man? The writer never hints that his readers 
would question this, for they were not tempted by any Jewish 
ideas. He uses the category of the Son quite frankly, in order 
to express the absolute value of the revelation in Jesus ; it is his 
sheer sense of the reality of the incarnate life which prompts him 
to employ the transcendental ideas. He does not start from a 
modern humanist view of Jesus, but from a conviction of his 
eternal divine character and function as Son and as dpyeepevs, and 
his argument is that this position was only possible upon the 
human experience, that Jesus became man because he was Son 
(21), and is dpxvepevs because once he was man. 

(a) For our author Jesus is the Son, before ever he became 
man, but there is no definite suggestion (see on 12?) that he 
made a sacrifice in order to become incarnate, no suggestion 
that he showed his xydpis by entering our human lot (8° tas 
ertuoxevoey TAOVTLOS OV, EavToV exevwoey ev Spowwpatt avOpwrwv 
yevopevos). Our author feels deeply the suffering of Jesus in the 
days of his flesh, but it is the final sacrifice at the end of his life 
which is emphasized. That he suffered as the eternal Son is 
understood : also, that it was voluntary (10%), also that it was 
his human experience which qualified him to offer the perfect 
sacrifice, by God’s x¢pis. But, apart from the (2°) allusion to 
the temporary inferiority to angels, the writer does not touch the 
moving idea of-the kenotic theories of the incarnation, viz. thé 
*‘sense of sacrifice on the part of a pre-existent One.” ? 

(4) Since he knew nothing of the sombre view of the odpé 


. As H. J. Holtzmann (Meutest, Theologie*, ii. 337) and Pfleiderer (p. 287) 
imagine. 
*H. R. Mackintosh, 7he Person of Christ, pp. 265 f. 


INTRODUCTION hi 


which pervaded the Pauline psychology, he found no difficulty 
in understanding how the sinless Jesus could share human flesh 
and blood. The sinlessness is assumed, not argued (cp. on 
41 57). Yet the writer does not simply transfer it as a dogmatic 
predicate of messiahship to Jesus. One of the characteristics 
which set IIpds “Efpaiovs apart in the early Christian literature is 
the idea that Jesus did not possess sinlessness simply as a pre- 
rogative of his divine Sonship or as a requisite for the validity 
of his priestly function. It wasnotamere endowment. The idea 
rather is that he had to realize and maintain it by a prolonged 
moral conflict év rats juepais THS GapKos avtod. This view goes 
back to direct historical tradition, with its deeply marked im- 
pression of the personality of Jesus, and no sort of justice is done 
to IIpds “EGpaious if its conceptions of the human Son as sinless 
are referred to a theoretical interest or dogmatic prepossession. 
Such an interpretation is bound up with the view that IIpds 
“EBpatious represents the more or less arbitrary fusion of an his- 
torical tradition about Jesus with a pre-Christian christology. 
But it is not enough to speak vaguely of materials for such a 
christology fioating in pre-Christian Judaism and crystallizing 
round the person of Jesus, once Jesus was identified with the 
messiah. The crystallization was not fortuitous. What If{pos 
“EBpaiovs contains is a christology which implies features and 
characteristics in Jesus too definite to be explained away as 
picturesque deductions from messianic postulates or Philonic 
speculations. These undoubtedly enter into the statement of 
the christology, but the motives and interests of that christology 
lie everywhere. The writer’s starting-point is not to be sought 
in some semi-metaphysical idea like that of the eternal Son asa 
supernatural being who dipped into humanity for a brief interval 
in order to rise once more and resume his celestial glory; the 
mere fact that the eschatology is retained, though it does not 
always accord with the writer’s characteristic view of Christ, shows 
that he was working from a primitive historical tradition about 
Jesus (see above, pp. xlivf.). To this may be added the fact 
that he avoids the Hellenistic term owryp, a term which had been 
associated with the notion of the appearance of a deity hitherto 
hidden.!' The allusions to the historical Jesus are not numerous, 
but they are too detailed and direct to be explained away ; he. 
preached owrypia, the message of eschatological bliss; he be- 
longed to the tribe of Judah; he was sorely tempted, badly 


' He does not use the technical language of the mystery-religions (cp. on 
64), and they cannot be shown to have been present continuously to his mind. 
If the argument from silence holds here, he probably felt for them the same 
aversion as the devout Philo felt (de Sacrzf. 12), though Philo on occasion 
would employ their terminology for his own purposes. 


lil THE EPISTLE TO-THE HEBREWS 


treated, and finally crucified outside Jerusalem. These are the 
main outward traits. But they are bound up with an inter- 
pretation of the meaning of Jesus which is not a mere deduction 
from messianic mythology or OT prophecies, and it is unreal, in 
view of a passage like 57", ¢.g., to imagine that the writer was 
doing little more than painting in a human face among the 
messianic speculations about a divine Son. 

(c) Neither is the sinlessness of Jesus connected with the 
circumstances of his human origin. No explanation at all is 
offered of how this pre-existent Son entered the world of men. 
It is assumed that he did not come out of humanity but that he 
came into it ; yet, like Paul and the author of the Fourth Gospel 
(1), our author is not interested in questions about the human 
birth. Even when he describes the prototype Melchizedek as 
“without father and mother” (7°), he is not suggesting any 
parallel to the Christ; the phrase is no more than a fanciful » 
deduction from the wording or rather the silence of the legend, 
just as the original priest-king Gudea says to the goddess in the 
Sumerian tale, ‘I have no mother, thou art my mother; I have 
no father, thou art my father.” It is impossible to place this 
allusion beside the happy misquotation in 10° “a body thou 
hast prepared for me,” and to argue, as Pfleiderer (p. 287) does, 
that the incarnation is conceived as purely supernatural. All we 
need to do is to recall the Alexandrian belief, voiced in a passage 
like Wisd 8!9 (“I was the child of fine parts: to my lot there 
fell a good soul, or rather being good I entered a body un- 
defiled”); the good soul is what we call the personality, the 
thinking self, to which God allots a body, and birth, in the ordinary 
human way, is not incompatible with the pre-existence of the 
soul or self which, prior to birth, is in the keeping of God. The 
author of IIpds “EBpaiovs could quite well think of the incarna- 
tion of Jesus along such lines, even although for him the pre- 
existent Christ meant much more than the pre-existent human 
soul. 

The meaning of the incarnation is, in one aspect, to yield a 
perfect example of faith (127!) in action; in another and, for the 
writer, a deeper, to prepare Jesus, by sympathy and suffering, for 
his sacrificial function on behalf of the People. The rationalé 
of his death is that it is inexplicable except upon the fact of his 
relationship to men as their representative and priest before 
God (2"£). From some passages like 5%! 727, it has been in- 
ferred that Jesus had to offer a sacrifice on his own behalf as 
well as on behalf of men (z.e. his tears and cries in Gethsemane), 
or that he only overcame his sinful nature when he was raised 
to heaven. But this is to read into the letter of the argument 
more than the writer ever intended it to convey. The point of 


INTRODUCTION hi 


his daring argument is that the sufferings of Jesus were not 
incompatible with his sinlessness, and at the same time that they 
rendered his sacrifice of himself absolutely efficacious. The 
writer is evidently in line with the primitive synoptic tradition, 
though he never proves the necessity of the sufferings from OT 
prophecy, as even his contemporary Peter does, preferring, with 
a fine intuition in the form of a religious reflection, to employ 
the idea of moral congruity (21°). 


(vii.) 

The symbolism of the highpriesthood and sacrifice of Jesus 
in the heavenly sanctuary is therefore designed to convey the 
truth that the relations of men with God are based finally upon 
Jesus Christ. In the unseen world which is conceived in this 
naive idealistic way, Jesus is central ; through him God is known 
and accessible to man, and through him man enjoys forgiveness 
and fellowship with God. When Paul once wrote, ra avw 
ppoveite, Ta avw Cyreite, if he had stopped there he would have 
been saying no more than Epictetus or Marcus Aurelius might 
have said and did say. But when he added, od 6 Xpuords eorw 
(év deta tod Geod xabypevos), he defined the upper sphere in a 
new sense. So with the author of IIpds “Efpaiovs. In the real 
world of higher things, ‘‘everything is dominated by the figure 
of the great High Priest at the right hand of the Majesty in the 
Heavens, clothed in our nature, compassionate to our infirmities, 
able to save to the uttermost, sending timely succour to those 
who are in peril, pleading our cause. It is this which faith 
sees, this to which faith clings as the divine reality behind and 
beyond all that passes, all that tries, daunts, or discourages the 
soul: it is this in which it finds the ens realisstmum, the very 
truth of things, all that is meant by God.” ! 

Yet while this is the central theme (chs. 7-10), which the 
writer feels it is essential for his friends to grasp if they are to 
maintain their position, it is one proof of the primitive character 
of IIpos “Efpaiovs that it preserves traces of other and more 
popular ideas of Christianity. Thus (a) there is the primitive 
idea of the messiah as the heir, who at the resurrection inherits 
full power as the divine Son or KAnpovopos. Strictly speaking, 
this does not harmonize with the conception of the Son as 
eternal, but it reappears now and then, thrown up from the 
eschatological tradition which the author retains (see above, 
pp. xxxuif.). (4) The isolated reference to the overthrow of 
the devil is another allusion to ideas which were in the back- 
ground of the writer’s mind (see on 214)5), (c) The scanty 

1 Denney, Zhe Death of Chrést, pp. 239, 240. 


liv THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS 


use made of the favourite conception of Jesus as the divine 
Kuptos (see below, p. lxiii) is also remarkable. This is not one of 
the writer’s categories; the elements of divine authority and 
of a relation between the Kvpios and the divine Community 
are expressed otherwise, in the idea of the Highpriest and the 
People. 

Furthermore the category of the Highpriesthood itself was 
not large enough for the writer’s full message. (a) It could not 
be fitted in with his eschatology any more than the idea of the 
two worlds could be. ‘The latter is dovetailed into his scheme 
by the idea of faith as practically equivalent to hope (in 10%) ; 
the world to come actually enters our experience here and now, 
but the full realization is reserved for the énd, and meantime 
Christians must wait, holding fast to the revelation of God in 
the present. ‘The former could not be adjusted to the eschat- 
ology, and the result is that when the writer passes to speak in- 
terms of the primitive expectation of the end (10-129), he 
allows the idea of the Highpriesthood to fall into the back-. 
ground. In any case the return of Jesus is connected only 
with the deliverance of his own People (978). He does not 
come to judge; that is a function reserved for God. The 
end is heralded by a cataclysm which is to shake the whole 
universe, heaven as well as earth (14* 1226f), another conception 
which, however impressive, by no means harmonizes with the 
idea of the two spheres. But the writer’s intense consciousness of 
living in the last days proved too strong for his speculative theory 
of the eternal and the material orders. (0) Again, the High- 
priesthood was inadequate to the ethical conceptions of the 
writer. It did involve ethical ideas—the cleansing of the con- 
science and the prompting of devotion and awe, moral con- 
secration, and inward purity (these being the real ‘‘ worship ”) ; 
but when he desires to inspire his readers he instinctively turns 
to the vivid conception of Jesus as the dpxyyds, as the pioneer 
and supreme example of faith on earth. 

The latter aspect brings out the idea of a contemplation 
of Jesus Christ, a vision of his reality (cp. 3! 12! *), which, 
when correlated with the idea of a participation in the higher 
world of reality, as embodied in the Highpriest aspect, raises 
the question, how far is it legitimate to speak of the writer as 
mystical P 


(vili.) 
To claim or to deny that he was a mystic is, after all, a 
question of words. He is devoid of the faith-mysticism which 


characterizes Paul. Even when he speaks once of believers being 
wéroxo. Xpiorod (3/4), he means no more than their membership 


INTRODUCTION lv 


in the household of God over which Christ presides ; there is no 
hint of the personal trust in Christ which distinguishes ‘faith ” 
in Paul. As important is the consideration that the writer does 
not take the sacrifices of the levitical cultus as merely symbolizing 
union with God. Such is the genuinely mystical interpretation. 
To him, on the other hand, sacrifice is an action which bears 
upon man’s relation to God, and it is from this point of view 
that he estimates and criticizes the levitical cultus. But while 
technically he is not a mystic, even in the sense in which that 
much-abused term may be applied to any NT writer, he has 
notes and qualities which might be called “mystical.” To call 
him an ‘‘idealist” is the only alternative, and this is misleading, 
for idealism suggests a philosophical detachment which is not suit- 
able to IIpos “E@paiovs. On the other hand, his profound sense 
of the eternal realities, his view of religion as inspired by the 
unseen powers of God, his conception of fellowship with God as 
based on the eternal presence of Jesus in heaven—these and 
other elements in his mind mark him as a definitely unworldly 
spirit, impatient of any sensuous medium, even of a sacrificial 
meal, that would interpose between the human soul and God. 
Not that he uses any pantheistic language; he is more careful 
to avoid this than a writer like the author of First John. His 
deep moral nature conceives of God as a transcendent Majestic 
Being, before whom believers must feel awe and reverence, even 
as they rejoice and are thankful. He has a wholesome sense of 
God’s authority, and an instinctive aversion to anything like a 
sentimental, presumptuous piety (see above, pp. xxxvf.). Yet 
as he speaks of the Rest or the City of God, as he describes the 
eternal Sanctuary, or the unshaken order of things, or as he 
delineates the present position of God’s People here in their 
constant dependence on the unseen relation between Christ and 
God, he almost tempts us to call him ‘‘ mystical,” if ‘‘ mysticism ” 
could be restricted to the idea that the human soul may be 
united to Absolute Reality or God. MHe is certainly not 
mystical as Philo is;} there is no hint in IIpds “EGpaiovs, for 
example, of an individualistic, occasional rapture, in which the 
soul soars above sense and thought into the empyrean of the 
unconditioned. He remains in close touch with moral realities 
and the historical tradition. But the spirituality of his outlook, 
with its speculative reach and its steady openness to influences 
pouring from the unseen realities, hardly deserves to be de- 
nied the name of “mystical,” simply because it is neither wistful 
nor emotional. 


1 The soundest account of Philo’s ‘‘ mysticism” is by Professor I]. A. A. 
Kennedy in Philo’s Contribution lo Religion, p. 211 f. 


lvi THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS 


§ 3. STYLE AND DICTION. 

(i) | 
IIpos “EBpaiouvs is distinguished, among the prose works of 
the primitive church, by its rhythmical cadences. The writer 
was acquainted with the oratorical rhythms which were popular- 
ized by Isokrates, and although he uses them freely, when he 
uses them at all, his periods show traces of this rhetorical 
method. According to Aristotle’s rules upon the use of paeans 
in prose rhythm (A4ez. ill. 8. 6-7), the opening ought to be 
—-vcv, while .. J - should be reserved for the conclusion. 
Our author, however, begins with roAvpepws, an introductory 
rhythm (cp. 1° 3!%) which seems to be rather a favourite with 

him, ¢.g. 3! ofev adeAd, 7 10 Mert Hoye ev Tn, 12% BAemere py, 137° 
o de Geos, though he varies it with an anapaest and an iambus 
vunmun (eg. 2h #5 14 7116 816 ovK eracy, 12! etc.), or -- U- — 
(as in 512 64 77, see below, 13° adros yap <ipyx, etc.), or -—---—— 
(as in 23 3° 116 mucrevoat yap det, 11° etc.), or even occasionally 
with three trochees -L-—VT-vL (e.g. 128), or -L—---— (12" 1338 
etc.), or -L .U--— (e.g. 118 41"), or even two anapaests (e.g. 1° 
511 1319), or -—- VT — (13). He also likes to carry on or even 
to begin a new sentence or paragraph with the same or a similar 
rhythm as in the end of the preceding, e.g. -L.0--v---— in 
4H and 4), or wll -= T=--~ in. 7) and 724” OF as Mow 
(--.---*=----* YU HU er =e Ow oo) and G+ 
Ce i rt rs Ol ne a hal 
ae to!l, and to repeat a thythm | twice in succession, as, O85 
vow an 2° (rTyAcKavrys ¢ Tila ¢ - THs apxnv Aa), WU --- in 
410 (6 yap eioedA Orv eis TV .. . G70 Tov Epywv aiTod), Or -L-U-— 
0 12! (rovyapotv Kai mets tTyAtKovT éxovres). The standard 
closing rhythm . VU. — does not clearly occur till 113 (yeyovevar), 
114 (ere AaAet), 1179 (BaotAéws), and 1274; it is not so frequent as, 
OPiy es TT Qt) LOM eno er 28 CLC. er ae ee 
to close with a single or an echoing rhythm like .—_—--— in 13 
(ovvyns ev tWyAois), 21° (dt wy TeAeLoar), 218 (wérovbe retpacbeis 
pLevots Bon Gjca), or —-~VJ- in het 98 (dpOjoerar . . . 
owrnplay), I1* (kev TO Oem . . . avTov Tov Geo), 112! etc. A 

curious variety in almost parallel clauses occurs in 111} 


~ 
_—>_ — — _ — _— _— _ 


"we — w 
€OTLV Be TLOTLS eXrilopevwv vroctacts 


xpay parov Sa ov Bx eraneier, 


INTRODUCTION lvii 


where the cross cadences are plain, as in Isokrates often. But 
at the end of sentences, as a rule, he prefers .L..—J (mapa- 
pvapev, 21 8°), or —-L-= (is Aadotpev, 2° 7% 7 etc.) or —U--- 
(wy TreAcr@oat, 219 218 314 43.11 7721 etc.), sometimes the weighty 
——— = (217 82 1039 119 ri! etc.), or V-U— (4! 5% 12 poe 18. 27 
118) now and then, or one or even two (51!) ens often 
ending on a short syllable. 

He is true to the ancient principle of Isokrates, however, that 
prose should be mingled with rhythms of all sorts, especially 
iambic and trochaic, and there even happen to be two trimeters 
in 1214, besides the similar rhythm in 12}% 26, Also he secures 
smoothness often by avoiding the practice of making a word 
which begins with a vowel follow a word which ends with a 
vowel (de Ta huwvyevta py Cuprintew). Parallelisms in sound, 
sense, and form are not infrequent. These oyjpara of Isokrates 


can be traced, ¢.g., in 17% where, by dvrifecis, Ov. . . mavTwr 
answers to 0s... trooracews atrov, as du ov . . . éxoinoev to 
depov .. . Suvdpews adtov, or as in 111, which is, however, a 


case of wapiowots or parallelism in form. As in Wisdom, the 
accumulation of short syllables, a characteristic of the later 
prose, is frequent in Ipods ee (e.g. in 21-2 wore mapapy .. . 


Aoyos eyeveTo BeBasos, 69. 19 Kae sone . . . OV yap adiKos o Geos), 
To? 11'* 19 72% 9 73% etc.). At the same time, IIpés “EGpatous 
is not written in parallel rhythm, like Wisdom (cp. Thackeray’s 
study in Journal of Theological Studies, vi. pp. 232f.); it is 
a prose work, and, besides, we do not expect the same 
opportunities for using even prose-rhythms in the theological 
centre of the writing, though in the opening chapters and 
towards the close, the writer has freer play. One or two samples 
may be cited, e.g., in the two parallel clauses of 17: 


a ww - ~~ 
ov €OyKxev KAnpovoxov TavTwv 


A ee Vv 
Ou OU K@L ETTOLYJO EV TOUS ALWVAS, 


or in 13 where acvews avrov answers tO apews avrov. In 216 the 
two clauses begin with —-—-— and end with emAapPavera, the 
verb being obviously repeated to bring out the anapaestic 
rhythm. The ‘cretic” (~-—), which is particularly frequent, 
is seen clearly in a carefully wrought passage like 4%!¢: 


Vw ~ wwe 


€l y2p QUTOVS Inoous KOTET AVC EV 


lvili THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS 


wy Sot” Maks b vw ww 


ovk av rept adAAns eAaAer peta Tavt(a) ywepas 


— -- —_ a _~ — — _— — — 
vw YY ~~ 


— 4 
ap(a) amoXereta, caPPaticpos To Aaw tov Geov 


we wotN A Ta, | Gen 


o yap ecc\Pwv es THY KaTaTavoW avToV 


~~ —- SY Ww 
KQL GAUTOS KATETAVOEV 


CI Ned, 


QaTO TWYV Epyov QUTOU 


~— a 


VY VY wy et ee ~ Nt 


WOTEP ATO TWV LOLWY O Geos. 


There is a repeated attempt at balance, e.g. of clauses, like 
Cr cee) :: 


7 Ce ee ee) 
YPYATAVTO du ALOTVUVYV 
7 =e aA SO 


eTETUXOV ETTAyYEALWY, 


where both have the same number of syllables and end on the 


same rhythm; or, in the next verse, where dvvayity zupos is 


Aa = ww 


echoed in edvyov oroya, while there is a similar harmony of sound 
in the closing syllables of | 


a wv 
vpot ev mroAcum 


v Neds | ee 


wav adXotpiwv, 


and in vv.3" and % the balancing is obvious in 


Ww 


ev dovw payxatpys 


mepinAfov ev 


votepovpevor GALB 


Seay Sete eet 


EV EPYILLALS 


or in the chiming of *8 and °°: 


Vw 


KOL omnAavots KQL TOLS OTTALS TNS ys 


~ 


Kal ovTot TavTes paptupybervtes 6. 


INTRODUCTION lix 


- As for the bearing of this rhythmical structure on the text, it 
does not affect the main passages in question (eg. 2° 62); 
rather supports and indeed may explain the omission of 7 before 
vio in 11, and of oAw in 27, as well as the right of peAdAovTwv to 
stand in 9! and in 1o!; it might favour, however, ayyéAwy yevo- 
pevos instead of yevopevos tOv ayyéAwv in 14, and the insertion of 
» oretpa in 1114 and of ope in 12}8, if it were pressed ; while, on the 
other hand, as employed by Blass, it buttresses the wrong insertion 
of pexpt TeAovs BePaiay in 3°, and inferior readings like ovyxexepac- 
pévous and dxovodetow in 47, éxdexopevors (D*) in 9%, ef in 127, ev 
xoAW in 12, and avéyeoPar in 1372, But the writer is not shackled 
to orixo., though his mind evidently was familiar with the rhythms 
in question. 

(ii.) 


There are traces of vernacular Greek, but the language and 
style are idiomatic on the whole. ‘Thus the perfect is sometimes 
employed for the sake of literary variety, to relieve a line of aorists 
(e.g. 1117 28), and indeed is often used aoristically, without any 
subtle intention (cp. on 7° etc.); it is pedantic to press signifi- 
cance into the tenses, without carefully watching the contemporary 
Hellenistic usage. The definite article is sparingly employed. 
Me ... 4¢, on the other hand, is more common, as we might 
expect from the antithetical predilections of the author in his 
dialectic. As for the prepositions, the avoidance of ovy is re- 
markable (cp. on 12!4), all the more remarkable since our author 
is fond of verbs compounded with ovv. Oratorical imperatives 
Brewused withretiect (2.9) 31414 4% 10° etc.), also double: (1° \x1% 14 
125-7) and even triple (3!%1!8) dramatic questions, as well as single 
Oresmtatee7 pts 10°? 11 84129)y. ‘The: /style(is: persuasive, 
neither diffuse nor concise. The writer shows real skill in man- 
aging his transitions, suggesting an idea before he develops it (e.g. 
in 217 58), He also employs artistically parentheses and asides, 
sometimes of considerable length (e.g. xafds .. . xatdravoiv 
pov 37-11 518. 14 85 7713-16), now and then slightly irrelevant (e.g. 3°), 
but occasionally, as in Plato, of real weight (e.g. 216 712; ovdev 

. vopos 719 104; micros yap 6 érayyeiAdpevos 1073; dy otk Hv 
agtos 6 Koopos 11°8 1314); they frequently explain a phrase (rotr’ 
eat tov dudBorov 2!4; totr éotw Tovs ddeAGors aitav 7°; 6 Aads 
yap er avrns vevonobernrat 711; Aris . . . eveotnkdta 9°; TovT EoTLV 

. Kticews 9}! ; rotr ear TIS wapKos avrov 1079 1270), esnecially 
an OT citation (e.g. 41° 619 77; 3 aitwes Kata vopov mpooéepovTat 108) 
on which the writer comments in passing. One outstanding feature 
of the style (for [pos “EBpatovs is A€gts KATEOT pap pwEev7, not Ais 
eipouevn in the sense of rapid dialogue) is the number of long, 
careimily constructed) sentences: (¢.pin 4 234214. 15.912-15, 412,18, 


Ix THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS 


1-8 g7-10 64-6 616-20 41-3 84-6 92-5 96-10 2-26 yoll-13 yol9-25 1 724-26 y 21.2 
1218-24), Yet his short sentences are most effective, e.g. 218 48 10!8, 
and once at least (3!%18) there is a touch of the rapid, staccato 
diatribé style, which lent itself to the needs of popular preach- 
ing. He loves a play on words or assonance, ¢.g. kapdia movnpa 
amTLTTIAS éV To atootnvat (317), mapaxaXretre éavTovs . . . aypts 


ov TO onpepov KaXretrat (3!°), euabey af dv erabev (58), kaXod Te 











Kat Kaxov (514), arak rpocevexOels eis TO woAANGY aveveyKeiv AyapTias 





(928), rorotrov Exovres TEpLKeimevoV HLLY VEPos MapTUpwY . . . TPEXW- 
fev TOV TpoKEimevoy Huty aydva (12'), éxAeAnoOe THS wapaxAncews 
. pnde éxdvov (125), wevovcav TOA GAA THY wéAAOVTAY (13}4). 
Also he occasionally likes to use a term in two senses, e.g. Cov 
yap 6 Aoyos Tot Geod . . . mpds ov Hutv 6 Adyos (4) }8), and diabnKy 
in gf From first to last he i is addicted to the gentle practice of. 
alliteration, e.g. woAvpepds Kal moAvtporms radar 6 Geos AaAHoas 
TOUS ots a) tots tpopytats (11), raca mapaBacis Kal wapakon 
(22), abyKey att@ avurdtaxtov (28), Tov dardctoXov Kal apxvepea. (3°), 
kairo... . amo xataBorns Koopov (4°), evOupyoewv Kal €VVOL@V (4 ay. 
ATAT WP, apnjr wp, dyeveahoynros (7°), dua TO aii doOevés Kal avu- 
eres (718), eis TO mavTedes . . . TOUS Te ey . . . WAVTOTE 
Cav (7%), ot KexAnpévor THS aiwviov KAypovopmias (g)), eionOey aya 
Xpworos avritima tov aAnOwdv, GAN cis adrov (974), éret Eder adrov 
TmoAAaKes madety a6 Karaohys Koo L0v (97°), drag emi ovvTedeia TOV 
aidvuy eis adernow TIS dpaprias (976), daroxetrat Tots avOpwrrots drag 
darobavetv (9*"), év abrais dvdpyno is O,pLarpT Lav (10%), advvarov yap 
aipa Tavpwv Kal Tpaywv aparpey dpoprtias (10%), Oriveow Dear prlo- 
puevou (10°), et pev exeivs pu wOvEvOV ad 7s e€éPyoav (11), raca 
pe TaLoeta pos peev TO Tra,pov (1 ath) TEPLO-TOTEPWS de TApakare TOUTO 
toujoat (131%). On the other hand, he seems deliberately to 
avoid alliteration once by altering dveAéunv into éroinoa (8°). 

One or two other features of his style are remarkable. There 
is, for example, the predilection for sonorous compounds like 
pcOamrodocia and etiepioraros, and also the love of adjectives in a 
privative, which Aristotle noted as a mark of the elevated style 
(Rhet. ili. 6. 7); in IIpos “EBpaiovs there are no fewer than 
twenty-four such, while even in the historical romance miscalled 
3 Mac. there are no more than twenty. Other items are the 
fondness for nouns ending in -is (cp. on 24), the extensive use of 
periphrases (cp. on 411), and of the infinitive and the preposition 
(see on 3!2). The use of a word like re is also noticeable. 
Apart from eleven occurrences of re xai, and one doubtful case 
of te... Te... Kat (6”), re links (a) substantives without any 
preceding «at or 6€; (0) principal clauses, as in 122; and (c) par- 
ticipial clauses, as in 1° 64. Emphasis is generally brought out 
by throwing a word forward or to the very end of the sentence. 





INTRODUCTION lxi 
The writer is also in the habit of interposing several words 
between the article or pronoun and the substantive ; e.g. 


io Bes Tap avToUS KeKAypovonnKey, & ovopa. 
48 otk Gy wept cp adAys eAdreu PETA TAVTA HMEpas. 








toll ras aitas roAAaKis tpocdepwv Ovoias. 





12 7, CRY ¢ a , / 
Io play UTrep ALAPTLWV T POO EVEYKAS 6valav. 
—— 





1027 avpods Lyros éoOiew péeAXovTOs Tovs brevavtiovus. 





\ , € 4 ¢ \ lal e a 
12° rov TOLQUTYV VTOMEVEVYKOTA VITO TWV dpLapTwA av eis avTov 


> / 
avTtAoyiav. 


Further, his use of the genitive absolute is to be noted, e¢.g., 


in— 
24 ovvertwaptupovvtos Tov eo KTA., 
41 xataderopevns ... adtov (seven words between px zore 
and dox7j Tus). 
4° kairo. TOV epyov tf - yevnevtov. 


72 perar Gepevns yap ris lepwovyys. 

84 ovTwv TOV T poo pepovTwv KaTa vomov TA OMpa., 
9° rovtwv 5€ ovTw KaTecKevacpevov. 

!) 


8 rottro SyAovytos Tov Ivevpatos tot “Ayiov ... ere THS 
TPOTNS TKYNVAS ExovTNS TTACLV. 
15 Q 4 / / d b 
9 avdtov ‘yevopevov . . . TapaSdaoewv (ten words between 
dws and 7. é. AaBdow). 
9)? Aarnbelons yap maons évroAys . . . Muvoéws. 


10° éxovaiws yap dpaptavovTwv nUdv. 
11+ paptupovvtos et Tots dwpots airod Tov Ged, 


Finally, there is an obvious endeavour to avoid harsh hiatus, 
sometimes by the choice of a term (e.g. didre for ort, as in 
Polybius and Theophrastus, or dxpis for aypi, or ws for dr), and 
a distinct fondness for compound verbs; Moulton (ii. 11), 
reckoning by the pages of WH, finds that while Mark has 5:7 
compound verbs per page, Acts 6°25, Hebrews has 8:0, and Paul 
only 3°8. 

His vocabulary is drawn from a wide range of reading. 
Whether he was a Jew by birth or not, he goes far beyond the 
LXX. His Greek recalls that of authors like Musonius Rufus 
and the philosophical Greek writers, and he affects more or less 
technical philosophical terms like aio @nryjpuov, Sypovpyds, béAnors, 
petpioTrabeiv, TeXerdw, TEAS, Tiwwpia, and trddevryya. He was 
acquainted with the books of the Maccabees, Wisdom, Sirach, and 
perhaps even Philo. This last affinity is strongly marked. The 
more he differs from Philo in his speculative interpretation of 
religion, the more I feel, after a prolonged study of Philo, that 
our author had probably read some of his works ; it is not easy 


Ixii THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS 


to avoid the conclusion that his acquaintance with the Hellenistic 
Judaism of Alexandria included an acquaintance with Philo’s 
writings. However this may be, the terminology of the Wisdom 


literature was as familiar to this early Christian dudacKados as to 


the author of James.! 

As for the LXX, the text he used—and he uses it ith some 
freedom in quotations—must have resembled that of A (cp. 
Buchel in Studien und Kritiken, 1906, pp. 508-591), upon the 
whole. It is to his acquaintance with the LXX that occasional 
‘“‘Semitisms” in his style may be referred, e.g. the éw éoyarov of 
11, the xapdia dmurrias of 31%, the év ue pa iee of 3, the Opovos 
THs xapttos of 41°, and the phrases in 579° and 12%. But this is a 
minor point. We note rather that (2) he sometimes uses LXX 
terms (e.g. dvvapets) in a special Hellenistic sense, or in a sense of 
hisown. (4) Again, it is the use of the contents of the LXX which 
is really significant. The nearest approach to IIpos “EGpaiovs, in 
its treatment of the OT, is the speech of Stephen, the Hellenistic 
Jewish Christian, in Ac 7!°3, where we have a similar use of the 
typological method and a similar freedom in handling the OT 
story (cp. ZB. 4791, e.g. Ac 729= He 1127), which proves how 
men like these writers, for all their reverence for the LXX, sat 
wonderfully free to the letter of the scripture and employed, 
without hesitation, later Jewish traditions in order to interpret it 
for their own purposes. But Stephen’s reading of the OT is 
not that of IIpés “EBpafouvs. The latter never dwells on the 
crime of the Jews in putting Jesus to death (123 is merely a 
general, passing allusion), whereas Stephen makes that crime 
part and parcel of the age-long obstinacy and externalism which 
had characterized Israel. In IIpos “EGpaious, again, the xd»- 
povouia of Palestine is spiritualized (37f), whereas Stephen merely 
argues that its local possession by Israel was not final. Stephen, 
again, argues that believers in Jesus are the true heirs of the OT 
spiritual revelation, not the Jews; while in IIpds “Epaiovs the 
continuity of the People is assumed, and Christians are regarded 
as tpso facto the People of God, without any allusion to the Jews 
having forfeited their privileges. Here the author of IIpds 
“EBpaiovs differs even from the parable of Jesus (cp. on 11); he 
conveys no censure of the historical Jews who had been 
responsible for the crucifixion. The occasional resemblances 
between Stephen’s speech and IIpos “Efpaious are not so signifi- 
cant as the difference of tone and temper between them, e.g. in 
their conceptions of Moses and of the angels (cp. on He 22). 
For another thing, (c) the conception of God derives largely 


* On the philosophical background of ideas as well as of words, see A. R. 
Eagar in Hermathena, xi. pp. 263-287; and H. T. Andrews in E.xposttor’, 
xiv. pp. 348 f. 


INTRODUCTION Ixili 


from the element of awe and majesty in the OT (see on 13 
418 7030. 817229), This has been aiready noted (see pp. xxxvf.). 
But linguistically there are characteristic elements in the various 
allusions to God. Apart altogether from a stately term like 
Meyalwotvy (1° 8!) or Adga (9°), we get a singular number of 
indirect, descriptive phrases like 6c Ov ta wavta xal 8 ov 7a 
mavra (21°), tO roujoavte airov (3”), mpos dv ypty o Adyos (41%), 
tov Ovuvdpevoyv owlev attov é€k Oavdtov (5°), 6 érayyeAdpevos 
(1023 r1!!), rov ddpatov (1177), tov dr otpavav xpnuarivovta (12%), 
After 11, indeed, there is a slight tendency to avoid the use of 
6 @Oeds and to prefer such periphrases of a solemn and even 
liturgical tone. It is noticeable, e.g., that while 6 @eds occurs 
about seventy-eight times in 2 Co (which is about the same 
length as Ilpos “Efpaiovs), it only occurs fifty-five times in the 
latter writing. The title (6) Kvpuos is also rare; it was probably 
one of the reasons that suggested the quotation in 11% (xvpue), 
but it is mainly applied to God (1214), and almost invariably 
in connexion with OT quotations (72! 8? 88% 1016 1030 126 736), 
Once only it is applied to Jesus (2°), apart from the solitary use of 
6 KUptos yav in 714 (+ 'Incois, 33. 104. 2127) and in the doxology 
with “Incots (137°), It is not a term to which the author attaches 
special significance (cp. on 774). “Incovs, as in (i) 29 (Tov de 
Bpaxd te wap dyyéAous HAaTTwpEvov BA€ropev ‘Inooidv), (ii) 3} 
(katavojoate Tov ardctoAov Kal dpxtepea Tis Spuodoylas ypav 
"Inoodtv), (iii) 41* (€xovres otv apxtepéa péyav dueAnAvOdTa Tovs 
ovpavovs, “Incodv), (iv) 679 (crov mpddpopos trép judy c<iondOev 
"Incods), (v) 7% (kata tocotrov Kat Kpeltrovos diabyKns yéyovev 
éyyvos Ingots), (vi) 10! (év rd atware Incod), (vii) 12? (tov rhs 
miotews apxyyov Kal TeXewwTiIVv “Incovv), (viii) 1224 (Kal diaOyays 
véeas peoity “Incod), (ix) 13!% (8:6 Kat “Incots), (x) 137° (rov 
Toeva TOV TpoBatwv Tov peyav ev aipate dSiabyKyns aiwviov, Tov 
KUpiov yuov “Incodv), is generally the climax of an impressive 
phrase or phrases. The unique use of this name in such con- 
nexions soon led to liturgical or theological expansions, as, e.g., 
31 (+ Xpicrov, C° K L © 104. 326. 1175 syr arm Orig. Chrys.), 
620 (4+ Xpiords, D), 10!® (+ rod Xprorod, 1827 vg), 1317 (+6, 5 [as 
Col 3!7]. 330 [as Col 3!7]. 440 [as Ro 8!1]. 623. 635. 1867. 2004: 
+6 kvpwos, 1836: Xpioros, 487), 1379 (+ Xpiordv, DW 5. 104. 177. 
mara gnats 371430. 5470 O23". 635. T8327. 1837, ‘1891 ‘lattt 
syr™ Chrys.). Xpiords (3° 91! 24), or 6 Xprords (314 55 61 g}4- 28 
1126), has also been altered ; e.g. 314 (xuptov, 256. 2127: Oeod, 635: 
om. Tod, 467), 55 (om. 6, 462), 6! (Oeot, 38. 2005: om. 429), 94 
(+6 C°DW 104. 256. 263 326. 467. 1739. 2127 arm: “Iyoois, 
823 vg Orig.), but less seriously. "Inoots Xpiordés only occurs 
thrice*(101%) 1:3°- 21), 











xiv THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS 


So far as vocabulary and style go, there are certain affinities between 
IIpds ‘EBpatovs and (a) the Lucan writings, (4) 1 Peter, and, to a less degree, 
(c) the Pastoral Epistles ; but an examination of the data indicates that the 
affinities are not sufficient to do more than indicate a common atmosphere of 
thought and expression at some points. I do not now feel it safe to go 
beyond this cautious verdict. The author of IIpds ‘E@patous has idiosyncrasies 
which are much more significant than any such affinities. His literary re- 
lations with the other NT writers, if he had any, remain obscure, with two 
exceptions. Whether he had read Paul’s epistles or not, depends in part on 
the question whether the quotation in 10° was derived outright from Ro 
12! or from some flort/egium of messianic texts; but, apart from this, there 
are numerous cases of what seem to be reminiscences of Paul. As for 
1 Peter, our author has some connexion, which remains unsolved, with what 
probably was an earlier document. 


To sum up. He has a sense of literary nicety, which 
enters into his earnest religious argument without rendering it 
artificial or over-elaborate. He has an art of words, which is 
more than an unconscious sense of rhythm. He has the style 
of a trained speaker; it is style, yet style at the command 
of a devout genius. ‘‘Of Hellenistic writers he is the freest 
from the monotony that is the chief fault of Hellenistic com- 
pared with literary Greek; his words do not follow each other 
in a mechanically necessary order, but are arranged so as to 
emphasize their relative importance, and to make the sentences 
effective as well as intelligible. One may say that he deals with 
the biblical language (understanding by this the Hellenistic 
dialect founded on the LXX, not merely his actual quotations 
from it) . . . as a preacher, whose first duty is to be faithful, 
but his second to be eloquent” (W. H. Simcox, Zhe Writers of 
TET daca): 


§ 4. TEXT, COMMENTARIES, ETC. 


(i.) 

The textual criticism of [pds “EBpafovs is bound up with the 
general criticism of the Pauline text (cp. Romans in the 
present series, pp. lxiii ff.), but it has one or two special features 
of its own, which are due in part (a) to the fact of its exclusion 
from the NT Canon in some quarters of the early church, and 
(4) also to the fact that the Pauline F (Greek text) and G are 
wholly, while BC H MN W p® and 048 are partially, missing. 
It is accidental that the Philoxenian Syriac version has not 
survived, but the former phenomenon (a) accounts for the 
absence of IIpos “E@paiovs not simply from the Gothic version, 
but also from the old Latin African bible-text for which 
Tertullian and Cyprian, the pseudo-Augustinian Speculum and 
‘‘ Ambrosiaster,” furnish such valuable evidence in the case of 


INTRODUCTION Ixv 


the Pauline epistles. The (4) defectiveness of B, etc, on the 
other hand, is to some extent made up by the discovery of the 
two early papyrus-fragments. 

The following is a list of the MSS and the main cursives, the 
notations of Gregory and von Soden being added in brackets, 
for the sake of convenience in reference : 


CopicuM INDEX. 


® saec. iv. (v.) [or : 6 2). 

i RATS [o2 : 6 4]. 

Baek lv; [03 : 61] cont. 11-98: for remainder cp. cursive 
203. 

as AY, [04 : 6 3] cont. 24-776 g!5_10% 1216-7325, 

Lan ot VEs) [06 : a 1026] cont. 11-137°, Codex Claromontanus 


is a Graeco-Latin MS, whose Greek text is 
poorly! reproduced in the later (saec. ix.-x.) 
E=codex Sangermanensis. The Greek text of 
the latter (11-12°) is therefore of no independent 
value (cp. Hort in WH, §§ 335-337); for its 
Latin text, as well as for that of F=codex 
Augiensis (saec. ix.), whose Greek text of IIpdés 
’EBpalouvs has not been preserved, see below, 
> xix. 

Hits. vi. ite : @ 1022] cont, 188 2U-16 318-12 412-15 yol-7. 32-88 
1210-15 7324-25: mutilated fragments, at Moscow 
and Paris, of codex Coislinianus, 


ane 1x. ». (OFS S12), 

EP. iX. [020 : a §} cont. 11-131 

Mii 4x: [o121 : @ 1031] cont. 114% 12-13”, 

Nuts Fe ax: [o122 : a 1030] cont. 58-6! 

Paris Gixy [o2z5 : a 3] cont. 11-128 12!!-137, 
Die ss Du lVs [a 1034] cont. 2!4-5° ro%11)8 18-12": Oxyrhyn- 


chus Papyrt, iv. (1904) 36-48. The tendency, 
in 2)4-5°, to agree with B ‘‘in the omission of 
unessential words and phrases... gives the 
papyrus peculiar value in the later chapters, 
where B is deficient” ; thus p!® partially makes 
up for the loss of B after 9. Otherwise the 
text of the papyrus is closest to that of D. 
p’ ,,_ iv. [a 1043] cont. 9179; Oxyrhynchus Papyrt, viii. 
(1911) TI-13. 
(vi. ?) viii,-ix. [044 : 6 6] cont. 17-8" 9'9-13”, 
(iv.—vi.) [I] cont, 1-8 912 24-7. 12-14 “34-6, 14-16 48-6, 12-14 55-7 
61-3. 10-13. 20 71-2. 7-11, 18-20, 27-28 Ql. 7-9 Gl-4. 9-11. 16-19, 
25-27 195-8. 16-18, 26-29. 35-38 x 76-7. 12-15. 22-24, 31-33, 38-40 
[ls 7-9 16-18, 25-27 7 27-9. 16-18. 23-25. ATT ASS an 
Freer Collection, The Washington MS of the Epp. 
of Paul (1918), pp. 294-306. Supports Alexan- 
drian text, and is ‘‘quite free from Western 
readings.” 


se 





1 An instance may be found in 10, where a corrector of D obelized the 
first and last letters of dvecdufduevor and wrote over it Oearpifduevo. In E 
we get the absurd difouevodearorfouevor (cp. Gregory’s Textkritik des N7, 
i, 109). 

é 


Ixvi THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS 


048 saec. v. 


[a 1] cont. 1192-134, Codex Patiriensis is a 
palimpsest. 

OLAS Sits xs [o®]. 

OLS 1M) jy) xi eS 


Three specimens of how the MSS group themselves may be 
printed. (a) shows the relation between M and the papyrus p}*: 

M agrees with p® in eight places: 

3! Incody. 

3° ddéns otros (+K L vg, alone), 

34 wavra. 

3° édv. 

3° buaer év Soximacla, 

3) ravry. 

333 ris €& Huadr. 

4? ovyKek(€)pacuévous. 
It opposes p!¥ (+B) in 


Bt és: 

3° + wéxpe TArous BeBalay, 
3° + me. 

4° odv. 


4°+7#v before cardravow. 


M has some remarkable affinities with the text of Origen (e.g. 1% 1% 23). 
(4) exhibits the relations of 8 and D*, showing how A and B agree with them 
on the whole, and how p” again falls into this group: 


x and D* agree in 


1? position of éroinsey AB M 84 ody AB 
18 +xal before 7 p4Bd0s AB M 84 om. rév lepéwy AB 
2! rapapudpev A B* 8" om. adrévafter uixpod A B 
2’ +xalkxaréornoas... 9° xepovBly (alone of un- 
cou A cials) 
2)5 SouAlas 9? Ka” Hy AB 
3! om. Xpiordy AB M p| 9?! épdvyricev A 
34 wdavra AB M p®| 9% om. 6 before Xpisrés A 
3) ra’rn AB Mp! room. o ,, did A 
3)® dv (so 7°) AB M p}*| 10!” odros A 
4! xaraduropuévns (alone), 1016 Sidvoiay A 
except for p'% 10°3 Nedove pévoe 
47 mpoelpnrat A(B)_ p85 | 113 7d Brerduevor A ps 
45 cuvradjioat A B* 1119 duvarés 
Be alr AUB |) Uae A eis 
va Teco 
5° pepl aduapriav AB 115? we yap A 
6° om, Tod Kéirou AB 1134 wayaipns (sor?) A 
616 om. mév AB 125 matdlas A 
e Aeul mete ercatee t iz! a of gre - nl 
om. Tév before’ ABpadu 12° wondv (so 12 
rt 3» 9 5, Medryuoedéx B 12" éxrpouos (alone) 
7 abrijs AB 13° Kaxovxoupéywr Ary iM 
711 vevouobérnrat AB 134 ydp A M 
718 capklyys AB 13° éybés A M 
717 uaprupetrae AB 1371 om. épy@ 
82 om. cal before od« dy- 
Opwiros B 


INTRODUCTION Ixvil 


(c) exhibits characteristic readings of H, with some of its 
main allies: 


1? xadapiopdv MEA BAe yOReea rics) bh vg arm 
2) SovNlas x Der. i 
a ris €£ Ono pe RvA. C H MP vg pesh arm boh 
34 rod Xpisrov yey. & AB CD WH MP vg 
317 rlow dé RF. BeGiD Hee Pe sah 
4)? évepyns Mev C.D H P KL vg 
4? Wuxiis x AB C H P L(vg arm boh) 
4 cuvrabjoat MAB i Doe ah 
10! @uclas(-airav) A CD H KL vg 
to! als Lae itt L 
10! duvdrat D H KL vg boh 
10? om. ovK Ti* (vg) pesh 
10? Kexabapiopuévous & D Inky 0M 
10° jvddxnoas Ass (. DreWill Bp 
10% rots deculas p® A Dis vg pesh boh 
10% éaurovs ete 3 H vg boh 
10% trapiiy px* A Doral. vg boh 
10° weyddnv wic8. =X A D WH P 
10° ypoviet xe A Dev oP KG 
108 wou éx micrews & A 1B hey vg arm 
12! raca dé pea A Dray et KL vg pesh boh 
12)3 roujoare x A D H KL 
12) airijs font ne ee H Ep 
1238 airot xe eee Ary ye Pai ROL 
1372om. Tavaldvev (. OaeeLl arm 
1379 quar RAR GS DEW M vg pesh arm boh sah 
137 dujy. x A CD H PMK vg pesh (arm) boh 
CURSIVES. 
Isaec. x. [6 254] 189 saec. xiii. [0 6 9°] 
2) to Pe exit. 253] 20s cays) 2X10 1203 | 
S as xl atore 531 206 =,,  xill. [a 365] 
Gv xiis(os960), cont.. E'-9% | 209 4, xiv..[6457} 
107-13 216)+,5) xiv. [a 409] 
AV gee xin G03 | 217 isu), Xin [a 10651 cont, 1*-6° 
220 ix. -x,' [0°49] Hort’s 17 218 ,, xiii. [5 300] 
35 5, xiii. [6 309] aaziees x. [a 69] 
38.55 + xiii. [8:355] 226 4,1) xi. [8 156] 
ry ote NS Me sO OR Rd 227, Wsieh Sia (@ 259] 
69 ,, xv. [6 505] 241 4, xi. [6 507] 
88 ,, xii. [a 200] 242 Une un Site [0 200) 
90 5, xvi. [5 652] 253 4, xi. [0 152] 
93 », x. [a 51] 255 + xi. [a 174] 
10t ee (| 2505) 5. axit) (a 276) 
104" 5, xi. [a 103] 257 4; «/ xiv. [@ 406] 
Tite aes] 263 ,, xili.—xiv. [5 372] 
L77esiti 2 xl. (4106) 293 5, xv. [a 1574] cont. g!4-13% 
LOT xi. [a 101] 200-0 avi. [8 Goo) 


188 ,, xii. [a 200} 323 5, xi.—xii. [a 157] 


Ixviil THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS 





326 saec. xii. [a 257] 941 saec. xiii. [6 369] 
BOT Was (iSite Oc) 999 ,, xiii. [5 353] 
B30 11) der kil. [Ov2hO) 1108 ,, xiii. [a 370] 
337. 5, xii. [a 205] /I149 ,, xiii. [8 370] 
a7 Tica, (a f431 | cont, seks MATT 7 Snes x. [a 74] cont. Bs at 6a. 
276) te dixie parase| iz” 
383 ,, xiii. [a 353] cont. 11-13? 1243 ,, xii. [6 198] 
418 ,, xv. (x.) [a 1530] cont. 11 | 1245 xi. [a 158] 
1317 | 1288 (St) xi. [a 162] 
424 ,, xi. (0'] Hort’s 67 TRIAL OT 
429 ,, xiil.—xiv. [a 398] T3100; ex LOO) 
ASTM jy.) HRI, [02694 T5190, St eee LO) 
ASG yes Khe LOE 7a) 1522°\5,)) xiv. [a4G4] 
ABO Hh). Visi. | 02004 1525 ,, xiii, [a 361] cont. 11-78 
Hazied ) emi. (Ore} 1610 ,, xiv. [a 468] 
456 ,, x.?[a 52] LOTT, 20) Xb a 20a) 
460 ,, xiii—xiv. [a 397] LP ION eG Kee 
461 ,,. xiii. [a 3590] 1758 ,, xiii. [a 396] cont. 11-13" 
462 ,, xv. [a 502] 1765 ,, xiv. [a 486] 
yy ana ba FAG hy a | 1927 onc Mili ery 
489 ,, xiv. [6 459] Hort’s 102 TOSto 55) AVA 72 
ADL RETA T Xi oar ha) 1020" 1; x [i OS) 
BOO} tay) kine OL sey peer is wes ey (sb) 
522 5 WOW. | 00024 1938 /),, ext. [a Tp 
B47, EXLOLOUI SG) 1845 ,, x. [a 64] 
64. 5 el OY 1852" ),,).\ xis fa Tia] conteet ene 
OSA are eres | 1867 ,, xi.—xll. [a 154] 
O99 Pa kiee Bor) 1872°"2)) Vo xii. [a 209] 
630i5 4) -aiexin [a 760] 1873" 4s px [eaeaae 


6424.5, exve faiss2)). conte? 13-7 an Totes x. [a 62] 
gPH13™ 1898 Gs ee fia 70} 


794 5, xiv. [6 454] 1906. 5, axl. [Ow 20!) 

SOS as) Sihao Zot) 1008.1, wh Rie |e 

BPs as Kill 0 0R) TOl2 ar x.-xi. [a 1066] 
S70.) Kills pc, 3504 BOOA L2G, x. [a 56] 

Olas, xival ea 7! 2055 ,, xiv. [a 1436] cont. 11-7? 
OLS er xii ooo | 2027 4) Sih 1 OFZ02 1 

Ol7 tas) US ee 204) 2138), ea Xiu Agee RO} 

CIOs xi hance 2143 ,, xi.—xil. [a 184] 

920 5, x. [a 55] 2147 ,, xii. [6 299] 


O27 0. xi. [Oues 14 


Of these some like 5 and 33 and 442 and 999 and 1908, are 
of the first rank; von Soden pronounces 1288 ‘fa very good 
representative” of his H text. Yet even the best cursives, like 
the uncials, may stray (see on 416). As a specimen of how one 
good cursive goes, I append this note of some characteristic 


readings in 424** : ' 
13 om. a’rod after duvdpews M Orig def vg 
om. 7udv x* A B D* M P 
29 xwpils M Orig 
31 om. Xpiorév Sy ASB DS CPM PE def vg sah 
3° 8s 972s, Me def vg 


3 ravry ATE I* M sah 


INTRODUCTION lxix 


-4)4 ricrews 
-5)? buds (om. Twa) 


8* om, 7p lepewv oe il oe bd P defvg 
9? Kad” Hy x A BD* fvg 
973 Kadapiferar (avdyxn) DF Orig 
10! dvvavrac x A DPC P [se. D*, Orig] 
10” om. A€yet KUptos x” Dr B defvg 
10*4 deoulois AE, (Orig ??) f vg 
11° om. avrod Seth AD We P defvg 
1255 avrfjs A Sy 
12% da’ otpavod x M b 
1276 celow x A CuM fvg 


LATIN VERSIONS. 
A, Old Latin (vt), saec, ii. (?)-iv. 


Hebrews is omitted in the pseudo-Augustinian Speculum (=m) and in 
codex Boernerianus (=g), but included in— 


d (Latin version of D) 
é ( 99 > a E) 


( 9 39 93 
r (codex Frisingensis: saec. vi., cont. 6§-7° 78-8! 977-117) 
Cette e BOGIEIANUS i) cel IX, UCONt wy I wk 2) 


Of these, ~ (corresponding to the text used by Augustine), with the few 
quotations by Priscillian, represents the African, d (in the main)! and x? the 
European, type of the Old Latin text; but / is predominantly vulgate, and 
it is doubtful whether x? is really Old Latin. On the other hand, some 
evidence for the Old Latin text is to be found occasionally in the following 
MSS of— 


B. Vulgate (vg), saec. iv. 


am (Codex Amiatinus : saec. vil.—viii. ) 
Wie. ogg) oF Uldensisi’ \{1,4)/l-vi2) 
¢cav{.,,  Cavensis: Mette a ah ; 
iol (2). Toletanas: /., viii) fe Pamtsh 
Basi ms) (ELarleiangs * 46); vill.) 
e( ,,  Colbertinus: ,,: -xii.) 


Though ¢ is an Old Latin text for the gospels, Hebrews and the rest of the 
NT are vulgate ; but He 10-11 in 4ar/ (which elsewhere has affinities with 
am and fu/d) is Old Latin, according to E. S. Buchanan (7%e 2 pzstles and 
Apocalypse from the codex Harletanus [z= Wordsworth’s Z,), numbered Harl. 
1772 2m the Lritish Aluseum Library, 1913). Both in far/ and in e, 
11°°*3 has a special capitulation ; Zar/, which adds after ‘‘the prophets” in 


1 The text of d corresponds to that of Lucifer of Cagliari (saec. iv.), who 
quotes 35-4" and 4-8 in his treatise De non conuentendo cum haereticis, 
xi. (CSEHZ., vol. xiv.). According to Harnack (Studien zur Vulgata des 
Hebrierbriefs, 1920) it is d, not x, which underlies the vulgate (cp. J. Belser 
on ‘‘die Vulgata u. der Griech. Text im Hebriaerbrief,” in 7heolog. Quartal- 
schrift, 1906, pp. 337-369). 

c* 


Ixx THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS 


11°2-** Ananias azarias misahel daniel helias helisaeus”—apparently points 
to 11°82? having been at one time added to the original text which ran 
(117%); ‘in hac enim testimonium habuerunt seniores qui per fidem 
uicerunt regna,” etc. Of these MSS, /z/d represents an Italian text, cav and 
tol a Spanish (the former with some admixture of Old Latin) ; am (whose text 
is akin to fd) is an Italian text, written in Great Britain. At an early 
date the Latin versions were glossed, however (cp. on 7} 117%). 


EGYPTIAN VERSIONS. 


sah = Sahidic (saec. ili.-iv.): Zhe Coptic Verston of the NT in the Southern 
Dialect (Oxford, 1920), vol. v. pp. 1-131. 

boh = Bohairic (saec. vi.-vii.): Zhe Coptic Version of the NT in the Northern 
Dialect (Oxford, 1905), vol. iii. pp. 472- 
555: 


In sah II pds ‘EBpalovs comes very early in the Pauline canon, immediately 
after Romans and Corinthians, even earlier than in the first (A.D. 400) 
Syriac canon, whereas in boh it comes between the Pauline church letters and 
the Pastorals. The latter seems to have been an early (z.¢. a fourth century) 
position in the Eastern or Alexandrian canon, to judge from Athanasius 
(Fest. Ep. xxxix.); it reappears in the uncials 8 A B! W. Not long 
afterwards, at the Synod of Carthage (can. 39), in A.D. 397, it is put be- 
tween the Pauline and the Catholic epistles, which seems to have been the 
African and even the (or, a) Roman order. This reflects at least a doubt 
about its right to stand under Paul’s name, whereas the order in sah and the 
primitive Syriac canon reflects a deliberate assertion of its Pauline authorship. 
The Alexandrian position is intermediate. 

The data of the Egyptian versions are of special interest, as several of the 
uncials have Egyptian affinities or an Egyptian origin, and as IIpdés ‘E8patous 
was early studied at Alexandria. Thus, to cite only one or two, boh is right, 
as against sah, ¢.g. in the rendering of mpés in 1’, in omitting dA (3°), in 
rendering trogrdcews as ‘‘ confidence” in 314, in rendering év Aaveld (4) ‘‘in 
David,” in reading waGeiy in 96, in rendering trdécracis by ‘‘ assurance” 
(so syr arm) in 11}, in taking cadXovmevos by itself (118), in keeping éAv0dcOynoar 
before émplc@ncav (11%’, though éreipdcOnoay, =were tempted, is inferior to 
sah’s omission of any such term), in reading éwayyeAlay (11°9, where sah 
agrees with W in reading the plural), etc. On the other hand, and in a large 
number of cases, sah is superior, ¢.g. at 2! (‘a merciful and faithful high- 
priest”), at 3° (omitting wéxpe TéAous BeBalav), at 4? (cuvyKexepacuévos), in 
rendering xpar@uev (4)4) ‘‘let us hold on to,” in maintaining @eds in 6° (for 
‘‘Lord” in boh), in omitting rod «érrov in 61°, in reading iepe?s (with W) in 
78, in reading tudy in 914, in rendering the last words of 9%, in rendering 
au... avTiroyiay in 12% etc. Note also that sah agrees with arm in 
inserting rs before érayyeNXdas in 41, borepov Neyer in 101% 17, and ydp in 12%, 
while boh agrees with arm in adding efrevy in 18 and alwyos at 51°, and both 
agree with arm in omitting xaf in 1%, Both translate eicepydueba (4°) as a 
future, read dmioriav in 4° (with vg and arm), omit xara rh rt. M. in 7%, 
take &ycov as an adjective in 9!, read weAAdvTwy in 9", take fs in 117 to mean 
the ark, read 7 oretpa in 11!1, render dyxov by ‘‘ pride” in 12, take bropévere 
as imperative in 127, and refer airy to rérov peravolas in 12% Sah has 


1 Yet in the archetype of the capitulation system in B IIpds ‘E8patovs must 
have stood between Galatians and Ephesians, which ‘‘is the order given in 
the Sahidic version of the ‘Festal letter’ of Athanasius” (Kirsopp Lake, 
The Text of the NT, p. 53): 


INTRODUCTION xx? 


some curious renderings, e.g. ‘‘hewed out” for évexawicevy (10%), ‘the 
place of the blood” for aiuaros in 124, and actually ‘‘hanging for them 
another time” (dvacravpodvras éavrois, 6°); in general it is rather more vivid 
and less literal, though boh reads ‘‘ through the sea of Shari” [? slaughter] in 
1179 (sah is defective here), which is singular enough. On the other hand, 
sah is more idiomatic. Thus it is in sah, not in boh, that ywOpol yévyno de (61). 
is rendered by ‘‘ become daunted.” The differences in a passage like 127° 
are specially instructive. Sah takes wavnyipe. with what follows, boh with 
ayyédwr (*‘ myriads of angels keeping festival”); on the other hand, sah is 
right as against boh’s reading of wveduare (v.”*), while both render ‘‘ God the 
judge of all.” In v.*6 both render émiyyeArae literally by ‘‘ he promised,” 
but boh translates wapadauBdvorres in v.28 as a future and xdpw as ‘‘ grace,” 
whereas sah renders correctly in both cases. In ch. 13, sah seems to read 
mepipéper Oe in v.® (‘* be not tossed about”), inserts py (as against boh), and 
reads juiy in v.21; in v.* it reads dvéyecGe; in v.?8, while boh renders 
do\ehuuévoy by ‘‘released,” sah renders ‘‘our brother Timotheos whom I 
sent’ (which confuses the sense of the passage altogether), and, unlike boh,. 
omits the final dujv. It is significant that sah} often tallies with ~ as against 
d, e.g. in 6'8 (icxupdav), 77" (apxeepets), though with d now and then against 7, 
as in 11° (6é). It agrees with d and eth in reading wvefua in 17, ws iudrvoy in 
1/2 (as well as éAlfers), and kal rév Tpd-ywy in 9}¥, but differs from @ almost as 
often, and from eth in reading ravry in 3, in omitting xara 7. 7. M. in 7”, 
etc. Unexpectedly a collation of sah and of eth yields no material for a clear 
decision upon the relation of the texts they imply. 


a 
SYRIAC VERSIONS. 


For the Old Syriac, z.e. for the Syriac text of Hebrews prior to the vulgate 
revision (Peshitta) of the fifth century, we possess even less material than in 
the case of the Old Latin version. Hebrews belonged to the old Syrian canon, 
but the primitive text can only be recovered approximately from (i) the 
Armenian version,” which rests in part upon an Old Syriac basis—‘‘ readings 
of the Armenian vulgate which differ from the ordinary Greek text, especially 
if they are supported by the Peshitta, may be considered with some confidence 
to have been derived from the lost Old Syriac” (F. C. Burkitt, 4&2. 5004) ; 
from (ii) the homilies of Aphraates (saec. iv), and from (iii) the Armenian 
translation of Ephraem Syrus (saec. iv.), Commentariz in Epp. Paul nunc 
primum ex armenio in latinum sermonem a patribus Mekithartstts translatt 
(Venice, 1893, pp. 200-242). 

Hebrews is not extant in the Philoxenian version of A.D. 508, but the 
Harklean revision of that text (A.D. 616-617) is now accessible in complete 
form, thanks to R. L. Bensly’s edition (7he Harklean Version of the Epistle 
to the Hebrews, 11-13”, now edited for the first time with Introduction and 
Notes, Cambridge, 1889). The Peshitta version is now conveniently accessible 
in the British and Foreign Bible Society’s edition of The New Testament in 
Syriac (1920). 


1Tt rarely goes its own way, but the omission of any adjective at all with 
mvevparos in 94 is most remarkable; so is the reading of buds for quads in 13° 
(where M Orig have one of their characteristic agreements in omitting any 
pronoun). 
2 Mr. F. C. Conybeare kindly supplied me with a fresh collation. 


Ixxil THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS 


The early evidence for the use of Ilpos “EBpaiovs may be 
chronologically tabulated as follows : 





MSS. | VERSIONS. WRITERS. 
100-200 | ; Clem. Rom. | ‘ 
200-300 (Old Syriac)(Old Latin) | Clem. Alex. | Tertullian 
} me 2 Origen aby ; 
00-400 Eusebius (-340 
ant ye he! Basil (-379) Lucifer (-371) 
B Sahidic (?) Cyril of Jerus. (-386) Priscillian (-385) 
Apollinaris (—392) | Ambrose (397) 
x (2) vulgate (370-383) Cher yacaicnn (-407) | Jerome (-420) 
Theodore of Mopsuestia 
400-500 |W (?) | peshitta (411-435) Augustine (~430) 
Cyril of Alex. (-444) 
AC Armenian | Theodoret (-458) 
048 
500-600 | D d ‘ 
| fuld Ethiopic Fulgentius 
H r 
600-700 harklean (616-617) 
700-800 am Bohairic (?) | 
YY tol 
800-900 L | 
MN f | Sedulius Scotus 
mca, 
Qo00-1000 e (?) 
O142 





xs A BCH M WY W (with p!%) would represent. von Soden’s 
H text (approximating to WH’s Neutral), his I text (correspond- 
ing to WH’s Western) being represented by K L P among the 
uncials. But the difference between these in the Pauline corpus 
are, he admits, less than in the case of the gospels. Bousset (in 
Texte und Untersuchungen, xi. 4, pp. 45 f.) has shown that X° H 
(which tend to agree with Origen’s text) have affinities with 
Euthalius ; they carry with them a number of cursives (including 
33. 69. 88. 104. 424**. 436 and 1908), and enable us to recon- 
struct the archetype of codex Pamphili, ze. the third century 
recension of Origen’s text. This group would therefore stand 
midway between B 8 A C and the later K L (with majority of 
cursives). But no exact grouping of the MSS is feasible. The 
text has suffered early corruption at several places, e.g. 2° 4? 7} 
10% y1* 1187 428 3218 and 1321, though only the first of these 
passages is of real, religious importance. But, apart from this, 
the earliest MSS betray serious errors (cp. on 7! 11%), as 
though the text had not been well preserved. Thus B, for all its 
services (¢.¢. in 67), goes wrong repeatedly (e.g. 13 18 41”), as does 
x*® (eg. 15 om. atta, 49 69 917 tore, 1082 duaprias), and even 
p}8 in 4° (éAevoortat), 1018 (duaprias), 111 (awdaracts), etc. The 
errors of W are mainly linguistic, but it reads évOvpyoews in 4}, 
miotews in 611 etc. A test passage like 2!4, where “blood and 
flesh ” naturally passed into the conventional “flesh and blood,” 


INTRODUCTION Ixxil! 


shows the inferior reading supported not only by K and L, 
as we might expect, but by / and /o/, the peshitta and eth. 
Similarly the wrong reading paprupet in 7!” brings out not only 
K and L again but C D syr and a group of cursives, 256. 326. 
436. 1175. 1837. 2127. In 9% only arm inserts riore after 
amrexdexopuevors, but the similar homiletic gloss of du miotews 
before or after eis owrnpiav turns up in A P syr™’, and in 38. 69. 
218. 256. 263. 330. 436. 440. 462. 823, 1245. 1288. 1611. 1837. 
1898. 2005. In 9}* the gloss cai dAyOive is supported also by 
A P as well as by boh and one or two cursives like 104. To 
take another instance, the gloss xai daxptwry (in 108) has only 
D* among the uncials, but it is an Old Latin reading, though ~ 
does not support it, and it was read in the original text of the 
harklean Syriac. Again, in 11!%, what B. Weiss calls the 
“obvious emendation” éyevvyfyoav is supported by & L p#® 
and 1739, while in the same verse xal os 7 (xdéOws, D) carries 
with its A DK LP p?8, and D W omit 7) rapa 70 yetAos. When 
M resumes at 12%? it is generally in the company of & A D P 
(aS, €.8.; 1229; 24 25 125-990) once (127? om. ryv) with D* arm, 
once with D* (om. éfovciay, 131°), once with K L P (xaxoy. 13°) 
against & A D*, Such phenomena render the problem of 
ascertaining any traditional text of IIpés “Efpaiovs unusually 
difficult. Even the data yielded by Clement of Alexandria? 
and the Latin and Egyptian versions do not as yet facilitate a 
genealogical grouping of the extant MSS or a working hypo- 
thesis as to the authorities in which a text free from Western 
readings may be preserved. 


(ii.) 

The eighteen homilies by Origen (7253) are lost, though 
Eusebius (cp. above, pp. xvili-xix) quotes two fragments on the 
style and authorship. The “Arodoyia ‘Opvyevots of Pamphilus 
(partially extant in the Latin version of Rufinus) implies that 
he also wrote a commentary on the epistle, but this is lost, and 
the Syriac commentary of Ephraem Syrus (373) is only extant 
in the Latin version of an Armenian version (cp. above, p. 1xxi). 
We are fortunate, however, in possessing the first important ex- 
position of IIpés “Efpatous, viz. the homilies of Chrysostom (+407), 
extant in the form of notes, posthumously published, which the 
presbyter Constantine had taken down. Chrysostom’s com- 
ments are drawn upon by most of the subsequent expositors. 
The foremost of these Greek exegetes is Theodore of Mopsuestia 
(+428), who is the first to show any appreciation of historical 


1 The original text in one place at least (cp. on 11‘) can be restored by 
the help of p'* and Clement. 


IXxiV THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS 


criticism (Zheodori Mopsuesteni in NT Commentaria quae reperiri 
potuerunt, collegit O. F. Fritzsche, 1847, pp. 160-172). The 
exposition by his contemporary Theodoret of Cyrrhus (7458) is 
based almost entirely upon Chrysostom and’ Theodore of 
Mopsuestia (Zheod. Comm. in omnes Pauli epistolas, ed. E. B. 
Pusey, 1870, ii. 132-219). Similarly, the work of Oecumenius 
of Tricca in Thrace (tenth century) contains large excerpts from 
previous writers, including Chrysostom, Theodore of Mopsuestia, 
and Photius (cp. Migne, PG. cxvili-cxix). Theophylact, arch- 
bishop of Bulgaria (end of eleventh century), also draws upon 
his predecessors (cp. Migne, PG. cxxiv), like Euthymius Ziga- 
benus (beginning of twelfth century), a monk near Constanti- 
nople. The latter’s commentary on Hebrews is in the second 
volume (pp. 341 f.) of his Commentari (ed. N. Calogeras, Athens, 
1887). Ina happy hour, about the middle of the sixth century, 
Cassiodorus (Migne’s PZ. lxx. p. 1120) employed a scholar called 
Mutianus to translate Chrysostom’s homilies into Latin. This 
version started the homilies on a fresh career in the Western 
church, and subsequent Latin expositions, eg. by Sedulius 
Scotus, W. Strabo, Alcuin, and Thomas of Aquinum, build on 
this version and on the vulgate. An excellent account of 
these commentaries is now published by Riggenbach in 
Zahn’s Forschungen zur Gesch. des NTlchen Kanons, vol. viii. 
1907). 
asinee F, Bleek’s great edition (1828-1840) there has been a 
continuous stream of commentaries; special mention may be 
made of those by Delitzsch (Eng. tr. 1867), Lunemann (1867, 
1882), Moses Stuart* (1860), Alford? (1862), Reuss (1860, 1878), 
Kurtz (1869), Hofmann (1873), A. B. Davidson (1882), F. 
Rendall (1888), C. J. Vaughan (1890), B. Weiss (in Meyer, 
1897), von Soden (1899), Westcott? (1903), Hollmann? (1907), 
E. J. Goodspeed (1908), A. S. Peake (Century Bible, n.d.), M. 
Dods (1910), E. C. Wickham (1910), A. Seeberg (1912), 
Riggenbach (1913, 1922), Windisch (1913), and Nairne (1918). 
Other works referred to, in this edition,! are as follows :— 
Bengel (Bgl.). /. A. Bengelit Gnomon Novi Testamenti (1742). 
Blass: #*, . . Blass, Grammatik des mneutestamentlichen 
Griechisch : vterte, vollig neugearbeitete Auflage, 
besorgt von Albert Debrunner (1913); also, 
Brief an die Hebrader, Text mit Angabe der 
Rhythmen (1903). 


1 Some references, in the textual notes, are the usual abbreviations, like 
Amb.=Ambrose, Ath. or Athan.=Athanasius, Cosm.=Cosmas Indico- 
pleustes (ed. E. O. Winstedt, Cambridge, 1909), Cyr. =Cyril of Alexandria, 
Euth.=Euthalius, Hil. =Hilary, Lucif.=Lucifer, Sedul. =Sedulius Scotus, 
Thdt. = Theodoret, Theod. = Theodore of Mopsuestia, etc. 


BGU. 


BM. 
Diat. 
EB. 


Erasmus 


Expositor 


Ce ae 


Helbing 
IMA. 
Josephu 
LXX 
Magn. 
Michel 


Mitteis-Wilcken 


Ss 


Moulton 


OGIS. 
OF 


Pfleiderer 


Philo 


Radermacher. 


Rein. P. 


Syll. 


INTRODUCTION Ixxv 


Aegyptische Urkunden (Griechisch Urkunden), 
ed. Wilcken (1895). 

Greek Papyri in the British Museum (1893 f.). 

E. A. Abbott, Diatessarica. 

The Encyclopaedia Biblica (1899-1903, ed. J. S. 
Black and T. K. Cheyne). 

Adnotationes (1516), Zn epist. Pauli apostoli aa 
Hebraeos paraphrasis (1521). 

Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics (ed. J. 
Hastings). 

The Expositor. Small superior numbers indicate 
the series. 

Grundziige und Chrestomathie der Papyruskunde, 
von L. Mitteis und U. Wilcken (1912), I. 
Band. 

Grammatik der Septuaginta, Laut- und Wort- 
lehre, von R. Helbing (1907). 

Inscriptiones Graecae Insul. Maris Aegaet 
(1895 f.). 

Hlavit Josephi Opera Omnia post Immanuelem 
Bekkerum, recognovit S. A. Naber. 

The Old Testament in Greek according to the 
_ Septuagint Version (ed. H. B. Swete). 

Die Inschriften von Magnesia am Maeander (ed. 
Kern, 1900). 

Recuetl @Inscriptions Grecques (ed. C. Michel, 
1900). 

Grundziige u. Chrestomathte der Papyruskunde 
(1912). 

J. H. Moulton’s Grammar of New Testament 
Greek, vol. i. (2nd edition, 1906). 

Dittenberger’s Ovientis Graect Inscriptiones 
Selectae (1903-1905). 

The Oxyrhynchus Papyri (ed. B. P. Grenfell 
and A. Hunt). 

Primitive Christianity, vol. 11. (1910) pp. 272- 


299. 
Philonis Alexandriat Opera Quae Supersunt 
(recognoverunt L. Cohn et P. Wendland). 
Neutestamentliche Grammatik (1911), in Lietz- 
mann’s Handbuch zum Neuen Testament 
(vol. i.). 

Papyrus Grecs et Démotiques (Paris, 1905), ed. 
Th. Reinach. 

Sylloge Inscriptionum Graecarum? (ed.W. Ditten- 
berger). 


xxv THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS 


Tebt. P. . . Tebtunis Papyri (ed. Grenfell and Hunt), 
ve go2. 
Thackeray . “St J. Thackeray, 4 Grammar of the Old 


Gea in Greek (1909). 

Weiss. . B. Weiss, ‘Textkritik der paulinischen Briefe” 
(in Zexte und Uniersuchungen sur Geschichte 
der altchristlichen Literatur, vol. xiv. 3), 
also Der Hebriaerbrief in Letigeschichtlicher 
Beleuchtung (1910). 

Wiig ae: . Westcott and Hort’s Mew Testament in Greek 
(1890, 1896). 

Zahn. . Theodor Zahn’s eaaiaee in das IVT, S§ 45-47. 


COMMENTARY. 


oe pe 


THE final disclosure of God’s mind and purpose has been made 
in his Son, who is far superior to the angels; beware then of 
taking it casually and carelessly (1!~2*) ! 

The epistle opens with a long sentence (vv.!4), the subject 
being first (vv.!: 2) God, then (vv.*: 4) the Son of God; rhetorically 
and logically the sentence might have ended with év (+ 7é arm) 
vid, but the author proceeds to elaborate in a series of dependent 
clauses the pre-eminence of the Son within the order of creation 
and providence. The main thread on which these clauses about 
the Son’s relation to God and the world are strung is és... 
exdbicev év Se&id THs peyadwovvyns. It is in this (including the 
purging of men from their sins by His sacrifice) that the final 
disclosure of God’s mind and purpose is made; 6 Oeds éAdAnoev 
nplv ev vid... Os... ekdbioev kth. But the cosmic signifi- 
cance of the Son is first mentioned (v.”) ; he is not created but 
creative, under God. Hereas in 2!° the writer explicitly stresses 
the vital connexion between redemption and creation ; the Son 
who deals with the sins of men is the Son who is over the 
universe. ‘This is again the point in the insertion of dépwv re ra 
mavra Ktd. before kabapiopov ayaptiav romyodpevos. The object 
of insisting that the Son is also the exact counterpart of God (és év 
xrX. 5), is to bring out the truth that he is not only God’s organ 
in creation, but essentially divine as a Son. In short, since the 
object of the divine revelation (AaAciv) is fellowship between 
God and men, it must culminate in One who can deal with sin, 
as no prophet or succession of prophets could do; the line of 
revelation év mpodyras has its climax év vig, in a Son whose 
redeeming sacrifice was the real and effective manifestation of 
God’s mind for communion. 

As it is necessary to break up this elaborate sentence for the 
purpose of exposition, I print it not only in Greek but in the 
stately Vulgate version, in order to exhibit at the very outset 
the style and spirit of IIpds “EBpaiovs. 

I 


2 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS 


Tlo\vpepG@s Kal modurpérws mddat 6 
Beds Nadyoas Tols waTpdow €ev Tots 
mpopyras ém éoxdrov Tay huepav 
rovrwy édddnoev Huy év via, dv €Onke 
KAnpovdpnov wavrwy, dv ob Kal érrolnce 
rovs aldvas* bs Oy admravyacua THs dofys 
kal xapakrhp THs vrocrdcews avTou, 
pépwov Te TH WavTAa TH phuare THs 
Suvduews avrod, Kabapiouov TOV duap- 
Tiov mornodmevos exdOurev év Seki 
THs meyarwovryns év VWndols, ToroUTw 
kpeltrwy yevouevos Tay ayyédwy bow 
dtahopwrepov map avrovs Kexdynpovd- 
penkev bvoua. 


(To Lye. 


Multifariam et multis modis olim 
Deus loquens patribus in prophetis 
novissime diebus istis locutus est 
nobis in filio, quem  constituit 
heredem universorum, per quem 
fecit et saecula, qui cum _ sit 
splendor gloriae et figura substantiae 
elus, portans quoque omnia verbo 
virtutis suae, purgationem pecca- 
torum faciens, sedit ad’ dexteram 
majestatis in excelsis, tanto melior 


angelis effectus quanto differen- 
tius  prae_ illis nomen _heredit- 
avit. 


1 Many were the forms and fashions in which God spoke of old to our 
fathers by the prophets, * but in these days at the end he has spoken.tous by a 
Son—a Son whom he has appointed heir of the universe, as tt was by him 
that he created the world. 


Greek prefaces and introductions of a rhetorical type were 
fond of opening with zoAvs in some form or other (e.g. Sirach 
prol. zoAAGy Kat peyaddwv xtrX.; Dion. Halic. de oratoribus antiquts, 
moAAnv xapw KkrA., an early instance being the third Philippic of 
Demosthenes, rodd Gy, & avdpes “AOnvaior, Adywv yryvopévwv KTd.). 
Here troAupep@s Kal aodutpdtws is a sonorous hendiadys for 
“variously,” as Chrysostom was the first to point out (rd yap 
ToAupepas Kal ToAuTpoTws TouvTéaTt Siadpopws). A similar turn of 
expression occurs in 2% rapaBdous Kal mapaxon. The writer does 
not mean to exclude variety from the Christian revelation; he 
expressly mentions how rich and manysided it was, in 24. Nor 
does he suggest that the revelation év zpodyras was inferior 
because it was piecemeal and varied. There is a slight sugges- 
tion of the unity and finality of the revelation év vid, as compared 
with the prolonged revelations made through the prophets, the 
Son being far more than a prophet; but there is a deeper 
suggestion of the unity and continuity of revelation then and 
now. ILoAvpepds Kai woAvtpdrws really “signalises the variety 
and fulness, of the Old Testament word of God” (A. B. David- 
son). On the other hand, Christ is God’s last word to the world ; 
revelation in him is complete, final and homogeneous. 

Compare the comment of Eustathius on Odyssey, 11: modurpérws dveyvwp- 
lo0n waow ols HrOev eis yvou, undevds advayvwpicpod cummrecdvros érépw 
dvayrvwpicu@ Td cWvoNov' GAwWs yap TH Teteudxyw, érépws dé Evpucdela, érépws 
Tois dovAots, dAAov Oé Tpdrov TH Aaépry, Kai Srws dvopoiws dract. Tlodumepas, 
according to Hesychius (= woAvoxédws), differs from odurpérws (dtadédpws, 
mokidws), and, strictly speaking, is the adverb of ro\uuepjs=manifold (Wis 
7%, where Wisdom is called mvedua povoyevés, rodvmepés). But no such dis- 
tinction is intended here. 

In wdédat (as opposed to em évyarov trav neepav TovTwv) 

eds Aadyjoas, AaActv, here as throughout the epistle, is prac- 


aD 2. ] THE FATHERS AND THE PROPHETS 3 


tically an equivalent for A€yew (see Anz’s Sudsidia, pp. 309-310), 
with a special reference to inspired and oracular utterances of 
God or of divinely gifted men. This sense is as old as 
Menander (6 vots ydp éotw 6 Aaryowv Géos, Kock’s Comic. 
Attic. Fragm. 70). Oi warépes in contrast to jets means OT 
believers in general (cp. Jn 6°8 772), whereas the more usual 
NT sense of the term is ‘‘the patriarchs” (cp. Diat. 1949-1950, 
2553¢), #.e. Abraham, etc., though the term (3° 8°) covers the 
ancients down to Samuel or later (Mt 23°°). Our fathers or 
ancestors (Wis 18°) means the Hebrew worthies of the far 
past to whom Christians as God’s People, whether they had been 
born Jews or not (1 Co 10! of warépes 70v), look back, as the 
earlier Sirach did in his zarépwy vuvos (Sir 441-5074), or the pro- 
phet in Zec 1° (of warépes tuov . .. Kal of rpopyrac). For of 
marépes = our fathers, cp. Prayer of Manasseh! (6e0s rév zarépwr) 
and Wessely’s Studien sur Palaographie und Papyruskunde, i. 64, 
where boys are reckoned in a list ovv tots watpdor. The inser- 
tion of #pav (p!2 ggg. 1836 boh sah Clem. Alex., Chrys. Pris- 
cillian) is a correct but superfluous gloss. As for év tots mpooy- 
tats, mpopyrat is used here in a broader sense than in 11°; it 
denotes the entire succession of those who spoke for God to the 
People of old, both before and after Moses (Ac 3”? 737), who is 
the supreme prophet, according to Philo (de ebriet. 21, de decalogo 
33). Joshua is a prophet (Sir 461), so is David (Philo, de agric. 
12). In Ps 105) the patriarchs, to whom revelations are made, 
are both God’s zpodjrat and ypioroi. Later on, the term was 
extended, as in Lk 1328 (Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, xai wavras 
Tous mpopytas, cp. He 11°), and still more in Mt 512 (rots 
mpopytas Tovs mpo tuav). The reason why there is no contrast 
between the Son and the prophets is probably because the 
writer felt there was no danger of rivalry ; prophecy had ceased 
by the time that the Son came; the “‘prophet” belonged to a 
bygone order of things, so that there was no need to argue 
against any misconception of their function in relation to that of 
the Son (Bar 851° ‘“‘in former times our fathers had helpers, 
righteous men and holy prophets . . . but now the righteous 
have been gathered and the prophets have fallen asleep”). 

As no further use is made of the contrast between Jesus and 
the prophets (who are only again mentioned incidentally in 11°), 
it was natural that dyyéAous should be conjectured (S. Crellius, 
Initium Ioannis Evangeltt restitutum, p. 238, independently by 
Spitta in Stud. u. Kritiken, 1913, pp. 106-109) to have been the 
original reading, instead of zpodyjrats. But ‘the word spoken 
by angels” (2?) does not refer to divine communications made 
to the patriarchs; nor can ot marépes be identified with the 
patriarchs, as Spitta contends (cf. U. Holzmeister in Zeitschrift 


4 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS [I. 1, 2. 


fiir kathol. Theologte, 1913, pp. 805-830), and, even if it could, 
mpodyrats would be quite apposite (cp. Philo, de Abrak. 22). 
Why the writer selects mpopytas is not clear. But av@pwrors 
would have been an imperfect antithesis, since the Son was 
human. Philo (de Monarch. 9: €ppnvets yap eiow ot mpopyrar 
Geod Kataxpwpévor Tois éxeivwy dpyavots mpos SjAwow dv av éGeAHoy) 
views the prophets as interpreters of God in a sense that might 
correspond to the strict meaning of év, and even (Quaest. in Exod. 
2322 rod yap A€yovros 6 mpodytys ayyeAos Kupiov éoriv) applies 
dyyeAos to the prophet. But év here is a synonym for da 
(Chrys. épas dre kal 7d ev dua eoriv), as in 1S 28% (darexpiOy aire 
KUpLos év ToLs evumviots Kal év Tots dyAoLs Kal év Tots tpopyTats). 

In Test. Dan 1! [acc. to the tenth cent. Paris MS 938]? 
and in LXX of Nu 2414, Jer 2320[B: éoydrwv, A Q*], 2519 (49°?) 
[B: érydrwv, AQ], 37 (30) %* [AQ: écxdrwv, B), Ezk 388 (ér 
éxydrov érov), Dn rolt [écyatw ? éoxdérwv], Hos 3° [Q], éx 
écydrov tov jpepov appears, instead of the more common é7’ 
éxxdtwv tov ypepGv, as a rendering of the phrase O27 NMINNI. 
A similar variety of reading occurs here; Origen, eg., reads 
éoxatwv without rovrwy (on La 4°) and écxdrov (fragm. on John 
331), while éoxdrwv is read by 044, a few minor cursives, d and 
the Syriac version. The same idea is expressed in 1 P 1° by 
éx égxdtov tav xpovwv, but the rotrwy here is unique. ‘The 
messianic mission of Jesus falls at the close of these days, or, as 
the writer says later (92°), éxi ovvreAcia TOV alwvwv. These days 
correspond to the present age (6 viv aidv); the age (or world) to 
come (6 péXdwv aidv, 6°) is to dawn at the second coming of 
Christ (98 1087), Meantime, the revelation of God éy vid has 
been made to the Christian church as God’s People (éAdAyoev 
npiv); the jets does not mean simply the hearers of Jesus on 
earth, for this would exclude the writer and his readers (2°), and 
é\dAyoev Covers more than the earthly mission of Jesus. There 
is no special reference in éAdAnoey to the teaching of Jesus ; 
the writer is thinking of the revelation of God’s redeeming pur- 
pose in Christ as manifested (vv.*4) by the (resurrection and) 
intercession in heaven which completed the sacrifice on the 
cross. ‘This is the final revelation, now experienced by Christians. 

The saying of Jesus quoted by Epiphanius (aer. xxiii. 5, xli. 3, Ixvi 42), 
6 AadAdy év Tols mpoPyrats, ldod maperm, was an anti-gnostic logion based 
partly on this passage and partly on Is 52° éyd elue adrds 6 addy, mdperme. 
The author of Hebrews is not conscious of any polemic against the OT 
revelation as inferior to and unworthy of the Christian God. He assumes 
that it was the same God who spoke in both Testaments: ‘‘Sed in hac 


diversitate unum tamen Deus nobis proponit: nequis putet Legem cum 
Evangelio pugnare, vel alium esse huius quam illius authorem” (Calvin). 


1 The Armenian reading rovrwy after juepov, instead of av’rod, is incorrect, 
and may even be a reminiscence of He 17. 


I. 1, 2.] THE SON AND THE UNIVERSE 5 


In dv €OyKxev KAnpovépov mdévtwy there is a parallel, perhaps 
even an allusion, to the Synoptic parable: fizally he sent his son 
(Mt 2127), or, as Mark (12°) and Luke (20!%) explicitly declare, 
his de/oved son, though our author does not work out the sombre 
thought of the parable. There, the son is the heir (otrés éeatw 6 
kAnpovopos), though not of the universe. Here, the meaning of 
ov €Onkev KAnpovomov mavtwv is the same: he was ‘appointed ” 
heir, he was heir by God’s appointment. It is the fact of this 
position, not the time, that the writer has in mind, and we 
cannot be sure that this ‘“‘appointment” corresponds to the 
elevation of v.° (éka@cev). Probably, in our modern phrase, it 
describes a pre-temporal act, or rather a relationship which 
belongs to the eternal order. The force of the aorist €Oyxev is 
best rendered by the English perfect, ‘“‘has appointed”; no 
definite time is necessarily intended. 

‘* Nam ideo ille haeres, ut nos suis opibus ditet. Quin hoc elogio nunc 
eum ornat Apostolus ut sciamus nos sine ipso bonorum omnium esse inopes ” 
(Calvin). The reflection of Sedulius Scotus (alii post patrem haeredes sunt, 
hic autem vivente Patre haeres est) is pious but irrelevant, for xAnpovopetv 
in Hellenistic Greek had come to mean, like its equivalent ‘‘inherit” in 
Elizabethan English, no more than ‘‘ possess” or ‘‘ obtain”; a xAnpovduos 
was a ‘‘possessor,” with the double zwance of certainty and anticipation. 
‘* Haeres” in Latin acquired the same sense; ‘‘ pro haerede gerere est pro 
domino gerere, veteres enim ‘haeredes’ pro ‘dominis’ appellabant” 
(Justinian, Zs¢z¢. 11. 19. 7). 

In 8.’ ob (Griesbach conj. 8071) kat émotnce tots aidvas the 
Kat especially ! suggests a correspondence between this and the 
preceding statement; what the Son was to possess was what he 
had been instrumental in making. Tots aidvas here, though 
never in Paul, is equivalent (£47. 1147) to ra wdvta in v.3 
(implied in ravtwy above), z.e. the universe or world (113). The 
functions assigned by Jewish speculation to media like the Logos 
at creation are here claimed as the prerogative of the Son. This 
passing allusion to the function of Christ in relation to the 
universe probably originated, as in the case of Paul, in the re- 
ligious conception of redemption. From the redeeming function 
of Christ which extended to all men, it was natural to infer His 
agency in relation to creation as part of his pre-existence. The 
notion is that “the whole course of nature and grace must find 
its explanation in God, not merely in an abstract divine 
arbitrium, but in that which befits the divine nature” (W. 
Robertson Smith), ze. the thought behind 2% is connected with 
the thought behind 11°. This may be due to a theological re- 
flection, but the tendency to emphasize the moral rather than 
the metaphysical aspect, whicl: is noticeable in IIpos “EBpavous as 


1 An emphasis blurred by the tovds aidvas émoincev of D® K L P harkl 
Chrys. Theod. (Blass, von Sod.). 


6 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS [I. 3, 4. 


in the Fourth Gospel, and even in Paul, is consonant with Philo’s 
tendency to show the function of the Logos and the other inter- 
mediate powers as religious rather than cosmical (cp. Bréhier’s 
Les Idées Philos. et Religzeuses de Philon @ Alexandrite, pp. 65 f., 
r11f., 152, ‘il ne s’agit plus chez Philon d’un explication du 
monde mais du culte divin”; 174f., “la thése de Philon, qut 
explique et produit la doctrine des intermédiaires, n’est pas 
Vimpossibilité pour Dieu de produire le monde mais l’impossibilité 
pour l’4me d’atteindre Dieu directement”). Yet Philo had 
repeatedly claimed for his Logos, that it was the organ of 
creation (e.g. de sacerdot. 5, oyos & éoriv eixav Oeod, & od 
ovptas 6 KOcmos eOnutoupyetro), and this is what is here, as by 
Paul, claimed for Christ. Only, it is a religious, not a cosmo- 
logical, instinct that prompts the thought. The early Christian, 
who believed in the lordship of Christ over the world, felt, as a 
modern would put it, that the end must be implicit in the be- 
ginning, that the aim and principle of the world must be essenti- 
ally Christian. This is not elaborated in ‘‘ Hebrews” any more 
than in the Fourth Gospel (Jn 1°); the author elsewhere prefers 
the simple monotheistic expression (21° 11%). But the idea is 
consonant with his conception of the Son. ‘If pre-existence is 
a legitimate way of expressing the absolute significance of Jesus, 
then the mediation of creation through Christ is a legitimate 
way of putting the conviction that in the last resort, and in spite 
of appearances, the world in which we live is a Christian world, 
our ally, not our adversary” (Denney in ZAZ. viii. 516f.). 

3 He (5s av) reflecting God’s bright glory and stamped with God’s own 
character, sustains the untverse with his word of power; when he had 
secured our purification from sins, he sat down at the right hand of the 


Mayzesty on high ; * and thus he ts superior to (kpelrtwv) the angels, as he has 
inherited a Name superior (diapopwrepov, 8°) to theirs. 


The unique relation of Christ to God is one of the unborrowed 
truths of Christianity, but it is stated here in borrowed terms. 
The writer is using metaphors which had been already applied in 
Alexandrian theology to Wisdom and the Logos. Thus Wisdom 
is an unalloyed emanation 77s tot zavroxparopos ddéys, arav-yacpa 
. + » pwrds aidfov (Wis 77°: 26), and dravyacua in the same sense 
of “reflection” occurs in Philo, who describes the universe as 
olov dyiwy dravyacpa, wiunua apxetirov (de plant. 12), the human 
Spirit as tvrov Twa Kal xapaxrypa Oeias duvapews (guod deter. pot. 
ins. sol. 83), and similarly the Logos. yapaxryp is ‘‘the exact 
reproduction,” as a statue of a person (OGJS. 363 yapaxrijpa 
popdys euns); literally, the stamp or clear-cut impression made 
by a seal, the very facsimile of the original. Tne two terms 
dravyacua and xapaxrnp are therefore intended to bring out the 
same idea. 


I. 3.] THE FATHER AND THE SON 7 


tméortaois =the being or essence of God, which corresponds to his ddé&a 
(= character or nature) ; it is a philosophical rather than a religious term, in 
this connexion, but enters the religious world in Wis 167! (7 wév yap b7e- 
atacls gouxkrX.). Its physical sense emerges in the contemporary de Mundo, 4, 
Tay év dépt pavracudtrwv ra wév éote kar Eugacw ra Oé Kal’ irdaracw. The 
use of it as a term for the essence or substance of a human being is not un- 
common in the LXX (e.g. Ps 39° 13915) ; cp. Schlatter’s Der Glaube im NT4 
(1905), pp. 615f., where the linguistic data are arranged. 

xapaktyp had already acquired a meaning corresponding to the modern 
‘* character ” (e.g. in Menander’s proverb, dvdpds yapaxrip ék Adyou yywplferar, 
Heauton Timoroumenos,11). The idea of xapaxr#p as replica is further illus- 
trated by the Bereschith rabba, 52. 3 (on Gn 217): ‘*‘ hence we learn that he 
(Isaac) was the splendour of his (father’s) face, as like as possible to him.” 

An early explanation of this conception is given by Lactantius (adzuzn. 
instzt, iv. 29), viz. that ‘‘the Father is as it were an overflowing fountain, 
the Son like a stream flowing from it ; the Father like the sun, the Son as it 
were a ray extended from the sun (radius ex sole porrectus). Since he is 
faithful (cp. He 3”) and dear to the most High Father, he is not separated 
from him, any more than the stream is from the fountain or the ray from 
the sun; for the water of the fountain is in the stream, and the sun’s light in 
the ray.” But our author is content to throw out his figurative expressions. 
How the Son could express the character of God, is a problem which he does 
not discuss ; it is felt by the author of the Fourth Gospel, who suggests the 
moral and spiritual affinities that lie behind such a function of Jesus Christ, 
by hinting that the Son on earth taught what he had heard from the Father 
and lived out the life he had himself experienced and witnessed with the 
unseen Father. This latter thought is present to the mind of Seneca in 
Epp. 6°: 8, where he observes that ‘‘Cleanthes could never have exactly re- 
produced Zeno, if he had simply listened to him; he shared the life of Zeno, 
he saw into his secret purposes” (vitae eius interfuit, secreta perspexit). The 
author of Hebrews, like Paul in Col 11*!’, contents himself with asserting 
the vital community of nature between the Son and God, in virtue of which 
(@épwy re) the Son holds his position in the universe. 


In the next clause, pépwv ! re ta dvta is not used in the sense 
in which Sappho (fragm. 95, ravra pépwr) speaks of the evening 
star “bringing all things home,” the sheep to their fold and 
children to their mother. The phrase means ‘upholding the 
universe as it moves,” bearing it and bearing it on. “Thou 
bearest things on high and things below,” Cain tells God in 
Bereschith rabba, 23. 2, ‘‘but thou dost not bear my sins.” 
*‘ Deus ille maximus potentissimusque ipse vehit omnia” (Seneca, 
List. 31%), The idea had been already applied by Philo to the 
Logos (e.g. de migrat. Abrah. 6, 6 Aoyos . . « 6 T&V Awv Kupep- 
vayTHS ASLO. TA CUpTAVTG : ‘de spec. legibus, i. 81, Noyos 8 éoriv 
eikdv Oeod, dv ov atpras 6 Kdopos ednptoupyetto: de plant. 8, Aoyos 
dé 6 atdsos Geod Tov aiwviov 7d 6yvpwratoy Kal BeBadrarov epacpa 
tov dAwy éori). So Chrysostom takes it: dépwv . . . tovréorti, 
kuepvay, Ta dtariarrovta ovyxpatav. It would certainly carry on 
the thought of &’ ob . . . aidvas, however, if dépev here could 
be taken in its regular Philonic sense of “ bring into existence” 
(eg. guts rer. div. haer. 7,5 Ta py Ovta Pépwv Kal Ta TavTA yEevvav : 

1 gavepdy is, like droXe?rac in 4°, an error of B*. 


8 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS [I. 3, 4. 


de mutat. nom. 44, wavta dépwv orovodata 6 Oeds); this was the 
interpretation of Gregory of Nyssa (AZPG. xlvi. 265), and it would 
give a better sense to “word of power” as the fiat of creative 
authority. But the ordinary interpretation is not untenable. 


In TO pypate THs Suvdpews adtov, the avrod (atrod ?) refers to the Son, 
not as in the preceding clause and in 11> to God. Hence perhaps its omission 
by M 424** 1739 Origen. 


With xaSaptopoy . . . dots the writer at last touches what 
is for him the central truth about the Son; it is not the teaching 
of Jesus that interests him, but what Jesus did for sin by his 


sacrifice and exaltation. From this conception the main argu- 


ment of the epistle flows. Kadapiopov tév duaprtidv is a Septua- 
gint expression (e.g. Job qe Tolnow ot ie kabapic pov (72y) THS 
dpoptias ov), though this application of x. to sins is much more 
rare than that either to persons (Lv 151%) or places (1 Ch 23”, 
2 Mac 105). In2 P 1° (rod Kabapicpod tdv rdéAat atrod auaptiar). 
it is filled out with the possessive pronoun, which is supplied here 
by some (e.g. 7av D° K L harkl sah arm Athan. Chrys., iudyv x°). 
Grammatically it=(a) purgation of sins, as ka@apilw may be used 
of the ‘‘removal” of a disease (Mt 8% 4), or=(4) our cleansing 
from sins (94 ka@apiet ryv cuveldnow judy ard vexpOv epywr). 
Before xaOapiopov the words 6d: éavrod (atrov) are inserted by 
DHKLM 256 d harkl sah boh eth Orig. Athan. Aug. ete. 
A? éavrod=ipse, as éavro@=sua sponte. “Exdéicev ev dekia is a 
reminiscence of a favourite psalm (1101) of the writer, though he 
avoids its éx de€uav. It denotes entrance into a position of divine 
authority. ‘‘Sedere ad Patris dexteram nihil aliud est quam 
gubernare vice Patris” (Calvin). °Ev iwyAoits, a phrase used by 
no other NT writer, is a reminiscence of the Greek psalter and 
equivalent to év twWioros: grammatically it goes with é«kdéficev. 
(The divine attribute of peyaAwovv7 is for the first time employed 
as a-periphrasis for the divine JZayesty.) This enthronement 
exhibits (v.4) the superiority of the Son to the angels. “Ovoya is 
émphatic by its position at the close of the sentence; it carries 


tthe general Oriental sense of ‘“‘rank” or “dignity.” The 


precise nature of this dignity is described as that of sonship (v.5), 
but the conception widens in the following passage (vv.%), and 
it is needless to identify évoue outright with vids, though vids 
brings out its primary meaning. In togodtw kpetttwy yevdpevos 
(going closely with éxd@icev) tav (accidentally omitted by B and 
Clem. Rom.) éyyéXwv (emphatic by position) map’ adtods Kexdn- 
povépnkey Svona, the relative use of da0s in NT Greek is con- 
fined to Mk 76, but rowovros . . . 600s is a common Philonic 
expression. Kpeitrwy (for which Clement of Rome in 36? sub- 
stitutes the synonymous peiCwv) is an indefinite term = “ superior.” 


I. 4, 5.] THE SON AND THE ANGELS 9 


Unlike Paul, the writer here and elsewhere is fond of using wapa 
after a comparative. 

Kpelrrwy in this sense occurs in the contemporary (?) Aristotelian treatise 
de Mundo, 391a (dia 7d a0éaror Tv KpeirTévuw elvat), where Td ae 
means the nobler Universe. 

The sudden transition to a comparison between the Son and 
the angels implies that something is before the writer’s mind. 
Were his readers, like the Colossians to whom Paul wrote, in 
danger of an undue deference to angels in their religion, a 
deference which threatened to impair their estimate of Christ ? 
Or is he developing his argument in the light of some contem- 
porary belief about angels and revelation? Probably the latter, 
though this does not emerge till 22, Meanwhile, seven Biblical 
proofs (cp. W. Robertson Smith, Zxfositor?, 1. pp. 5 f.) of v.4 are 
adduced; the two in v.® specially explain the d:adopmrepov 
ovopza, while the five in vv.®14 describe the meaning and force of 
Kpelttwv Tov ayyeAwv. The first two are: 


5 For to what angel did God ever say, 
‘* Thou art my son, 
to-day have I become thy father”? 
Or again, 
“7 will be a father to him, 
and he shall be a son to me”? 


The first quotation is from the znd Psalm (v.”), read as a 
messianic prediction—which may have been its original meaning, 
and certainly was the meaning attached to it by the early Chris- 
tians, if not already by some circles of Judaism :1 

vids pLov El ov, 

eyo onmepov yeyevvynkd oe. 
Did the author take ojpepov here, as perhaps in 37, though not 
in 138, in (a) a mystical sense, or (0) with a reference to some 
special phase in the history of Christ ? (a) tallies with Philo’s 
usage : onpEpov 8 éoriv o dTréparos Kal dSvetirytos aiwv eo” “ave TO 
awevdes dvowa aidvos (de fuga, 11, on Dt 4*), éws THs onpepov 
neepas, TouvTéoTw del’ 6 yap aiav pills TO OHMEPOV TapapeTpeEtrat 
(deg. alleg. ili. 8 on Gn 354). (4) might allude either to the bap- 
tism or to the resurrection of Christ in primitive Christian usage ; 
the latter would be more congenial to our author, if it were 
assumed that he had any special incident in mind. But he 
simply quotes the text for the purpose of bringing out the title of 
Son as applied to Christ. When we ask what he meant by 
onpepov, we are asking a question which was not present to his 
mind, unless, indeed, “the idea of a bright radiance streaming 
forth from God’s glory” (v.*) pointed in the direction of (a), as 

1 See G. H. Box, The Ezra-Apocalypse, pp. lvi, lvii. 


10 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS [I. 5, 6. 


Robertson Smith thought. But the second line of the verse is 
merely quoted to fill out the first, which is the pivot of the proof : 
vids pov el ov. Sons of God is not unknown as a title for angels 
in the Hebrew Old Testament (see £47. 4691). ‘Sometimes 
Moses calls the angels sons of God,” Philo observes (Quaest. in 
Gen. 64—as being bodiless spirits). But the LXX is careful to 
translate: “sons of Elohim” by dyyeAou Geod (e.g. in Gn 6? 4, 
Job 18 21 387), except in Ps 29! and 89’, where sons of God are 
intended by the translator to denote human beings ; and no indi- 
vidual angel is ever called vids. As the author of [pds “EBpatovs 
and his readers knew only the Greek Bible, the proof holds EGod: 
The second quotation is from 2S 7}*: 


/ 
"Eyo eropat AUTO cis marépa, 
KQL QUTOS EGTAL [LOL ELS VLOV, 


a promise cited more exactly than in 2 Co 6!8 and Rev 21’, but 
with equal indifference to its original setting. Paul and the. 
prophet John apply it to the relationship between God and 
Christians ; our author prefers to treat it as messianic. Indeed 
he only alludes twice, in OT quotations, to God as the Father 
of Christians (see Introd. p. xxxv). 

The third quotation (v.®) clinches this proof of Christ s unique 
authority and opens up the sense in which he is xpeittwy tov 
ayyeAwv : 


and further, when introducing the Firstborn into the world, he says, 
“* Let all God’s angels worship him.” 


In étav S€ wddAw eioaydyy the term waAw, rhetorically trans- 
ferred, answers to the wad of v.5; it is not to be taken with 
eicaydyn = “ reintroduce,” as if the first “introduction” of the 
Son had been referred to in v.“*. A good parallel for this usage 
occurs in Philo (éeg. adleg. ill. g: 6 dé waAw adrodidpacKwy Gedv 
TOV pev ovdevos aitiov dyow eivat, where waAdw goes with Pyciv). 
Kioayev might refer to birth,? as, e.g., in Epictetus (iv. 1. 104, 
ovxi exetvos oe eioyyayev) and pseudo-Musonius, ep. go (Her- 
cher’s Zpist. Graect, 401 f.: ov Téxva povov eis TO yévos GAAa Kal 
ToLdde TEkVa eionyayes), Or simply to “introduction” (cp. Mitteis- 
Wilcken, i. 2. 141 (110 B.C.), etod€w Tov éwavrod viov eis THY cUvodor). 
Linguistically either the incarnation or the second advent might 
be intended; but neither the tense of eicayayn (unless it be 
taken strictly as futuristic =ubi introduxerit) nor the proximity of 


1Tt is only Theodotion who ventures in Dan 375) to retain the literal 
son, since from his christological point of view it could not be misunderstood 
in this connexion. 

2Cp. M. Aurelius, v. 1, toetv Gy Evexev yéyova kal dv xdpw mpojyuae els 
Tov Kégmor. 


I. 6. | THE SON AND THE ANGELS II 


mdaAw is decisive in favour of the latter (6rav cicaydyn might, 
by a well-known Greek idiom, be equivalent to “when he speaks 
of introducing, or, describes the introduction of ”—Valckenaer, 
etc.). Lpwrdroxos is Firstborn in the sense of superior. The 
suggestion of Christ being higher than angels is also present in 
the context of the term as used by Paul (Col 11% 16), but it is 
nowhere else used absolutely in the NT, and the writer here 
ignores any inference that might be drawn from it to an inferior 
sonship of angels. Its equivalent (cp. the v.// in Sir 361") zpwrd- 
yovos is applied by Philo to the Logos. Here it means that 
Christ was Son in a pre-eminent sense; the idea of priority 
passes into that of superiority. A apwrdroxos vids had a relation- 
ship of likeness and nearness to God which was unrivalled. As 
the context indicates, the term brings out the pre-eminent honour 
and the unique relationship to God enjoyed by the Son among 
the heavenly host. 

The notion of worship being due only to a senior reappears in the Vzta 
Adae et Evae (14), where the devil declines to worship Adam: ‘‘I have no 
need to worship Adam . . . I will not worship an inferior being who is my 
junior. I am his senior in the Creation ; before he was made, I was already 
made; it is his duty to worship me.” In the Ascenszo [saiae (117%) the 
angels humbly worship Christ as he ascends through the heavens where they 
live ; here the adoration is claimed for him as he enters 7) oixoupévy. 

The line kat mpookuvnodtecav ait mdvtes Ayyehou Oeod Comes 
from a LXX addition to the Hebrew text of the Song of Moses 
in Dt 324%, calling upon all angels to pay homage to Yahweh. 
But the LXX text! actually reads viot Geov, not adyyedou Oeod 
(into which F corrects it)! Our author probably changed it into 
ayyeAou Geov, recollecting the similar phrase in Ps 97° (xpooxv- 
VATATE ATO Waves ol ayyeou airov),? unless, indeed, the change 
had been already made. The fact that Justin Martyr (Dad. 130) 
quotes the LXX gloss with dyyeAou, is an indication that this may 
have been the text current among the primitive Christians. 

The last four (vv.7-!4) quotations carry on the idea of the 
Son’s superiority to the angels: 

7 While he says of angels (rp6s=with reference to), 

‘* Who makes his angels into winds, 
his servants into flames of fire,” 
8 he says of the Son, 

** God ts thy throne for ever and ever, 
and thy royal sceptre ts the sceptre of equity: 

® thou hast loved justice and hated lawlessness, 
therefore God, thy God, has consecrated thee 
with the oil of rejoicing beyond thy comrades” — 

10 and, 

** Thou didst found the earth at the beginning, O Lord, 





1 As the song appears in A, at the close of the psalter, the reading is 
dyyedo (viol, R). 
2 Which acquired a messianic application (see Dzat. 3134). 


12 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS (Ei % 


and the heavens are the work of thy hands: 
1 they will perish, but thou remaznest, 
they will all be worn out like a garment, — 
12 thou wilt roll them up like a mantle, and they will be raneey 
but thou art the same, 
and thy years never fail.” 


In vy.’ the quotation (6 rowv tous ayyéXous airod mvevpata| 
Kal Tovs Aecroupyovs avTod rupds PAdya) only differs from the LXX 
by the substitution of wvpds fAdya! for wip préyov (B: rupds 
ddeya A*). The singular in ¢Aoya and perhaps the recollection 
that wvedua elsewhere in NT =‘‘ wind” only in the singular, 
led to the change of zvevpara into rvetpa (D 1. 326. 424**. 1912. 
1245. 2005 d sah eth Orig.). The author is taking the LXX 
translation or mistranslation of Ps 1044 (6 wowv «rX., a nomina- 
tive without a verb, as in 1 Co 3!) to mean that God can reduce 
angels to the elemental forces of wind and fire, so unstable is 
their nature, whereas the person and authority of the Son are 
above all change and decay. ‘The meaning might also be that 
God makes angels out of wind and fire;? but this is less apt. 
Our author takes the same view as the author of 4 Esdras, who 
(82!) writes : 


‘Before whom the heavenly host stands in terror, 
and at thy word change to wind and fire.” 


Rabbinic traditions corroborate this interpretation ; eg. ‘ every 
day ministering angels are created from the fiery stream, and 
they utter a song and perish” (Chagiga, ed. Streane, p. 76), and 
the confession of the angel to Manoah in Yalkut Shimeont, i. 
11. 3: “God changes us every hour. . . sometimes he makes 
us fire, at other times wind.” 


The interest of rabbinic mysticism in the nature of angels is illustrated by 
the second century dialogue between Hadrian, that ‘‘ curiositatum omnium 
explorator,’” and R. Joshua ben Chananja (cp. W. Bacher, Agada der 
Tannaiten*, i. 171-172). The emperor asks the rabbi what becomes of the 
angels whom God creates daily to sing His praise; the rabbi answers that 
they return to the stream of fire which flows eternally from the sweat shed 
by the Beasts supporting the divine throne or chariot (referring to the vision 
of Ezekiel and the ‘‘ fiery stream” of Dn 7!). From this stream of fire the 
angels issue, and to it they return. Ae:roupyovs of angels as in Ps 10374 
(Aecroupyol avTov, moodvres TO OéAnua avrod). 


The fifth (vv.®%) quotation is from Ps 457-8—a Hebrew 
epithalamium for some royal personage or national hero, which 
our author characteristically regards as messianic. 


? Aquila has wp AdBpov, Symm. muplyny proya. 

2 As in Apoc. Bar. 21° (‘‘ the holy creatures which thou didst make from 
the beginning out of flame and fire”) and 48° (‘‘ Thou givest commandment 
to the flames and they change into spirits ’’”). 


I. 8, 9.] THE SON AND THE ANGELS 13 


€ / c ‘ > \ + a) a 2A 
6 Opdvos cov 6 eds cis TOV aidva TOv aidvos, 
kat! pafdoos THs evOUTHTOS H PaBdos THS Bacrcias Gov.? 
nydayncas Sukaoctvyv Kal éuionoas avouiav’ 
lal / 
dua TOVTO Expio€ GE 6 Oeds, 6 Oeds cov, 
M»” > / ‘ 3 ‘\ / 
eXaov ayaAAtacews Tapa’ TOUS METOXOUS TOU. 


The quotation inserts rs before ed@vryros, follows A in pre- 
ferring tov ai@va tov aidvos (rod aidvos om. B 33) to ai@va aidvos 
(B), but prefers * B’s dvoytay (cp. 2 Co 614) to A’s déixiav, and 
agrees with both in prefixing 77 to the second (D K L P Cyr. Cosm. 
Dam.) instead of to the first (8 AB M, etc.) fdBdos. The psalm 
is not quoted elsewhere in NT (apart from a possible remini- 
scence of 45°: ® in Rev 67), and rarely cited in primitive Christian 
literature, although the messianic reference reappears in Irenaeus 
(iv. 34. II, quoting v.”). ‘O Oeds (sc. éoriy rather than éorw) may 
be (a) nominative (subject or predicate). This interpretation 
(“God is thy throne,” or, ‘thy throne is God”), which was 
probably responsible for the change of ood after BacwAetas into 
airod (8 B), has been advocated, e.g., by Grotius, Ewald 
(“thy throne is divine”), WH (‘founded on God, the im- 
movable Rock”), and Wickham (“‘represents God”). Tyndale’s 
rendering is, “‘God thy seat shall be.” ‘Those who find this 
interpretation harsh prefer to (4) take 6 Oeds as a vocative, which 
grammatically is possible (=@ Océ, cp. 107 and Ps 38 138!” etc.) ; 
‘“‘ Thy throne, O God (or, O divine One), is for ever and ever.” 
This (so sah vg, etc.) yields an excellent sense, and may well 
explain the attractiveness of the text for a writer who wished to 
bring out the divine significance of Christ; 6 6eds appealed to 
him like «vpre in the first line of the next quotation. The sense 
would be clear if 6 Oeds were omitted altogether, as its Hebrew 
equivalent ought to be in the original ; but the LXX text as it 
stands was the text before our author, and the problem is 
to decide which interpretation he followed. (4) involves the 
direct application of 6 Os to the Son, which, in a poetical quota- 
tion, is not perhaps improbable (see Jn 118 2028); in v.® it may 
involve the repetition of 6 #eds (om. by Irenaeus, Afost. Preaching, 
47—accidentally ?) as vocative, and does involve the rendering 
of 6 Oeds cov as the God of the God already mentioned. The 
point of the citation lies in its opening and closing words: (i) 
the Son has a royal and lasting authority (as 6 6eds?), in contrast 

1 The addition of this kal is not to mark a fresh quotation (as in v.?%), but 
simply to introduce the parallel line (as in v.!° kal pya xrX.). 

Cp. Ps 1107 paBdov Suvdpews cov (om. &) éEarooreNe? Kvpros. 

3 For apd with accus. in this sense, cp. above, v.*, and Is 53% d&rimov Kal 
éxXurrbv mapa Tovs viols Tay dvOpwTwy, 

4 dvoulay, B D (A* dvoulas) M P lat harkl Ath. Eus., déiclay x A 33. 38. 
218. 226. 919 Iren. Cosm. 


14 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS (I. 9-12. 


to the angels, and (ii) he is anointed (éypure!=6 Xpioros) more 
highly than his companions—an Oriental metaphor referring 
here, as in Is 613 etc., not to coronation but to bliss. If the 
writer of Hebrews has anything specially in mind, it is angels 
(1273) rather than human beings (34) as péroxo: of the royal 
Prince, whose superior and supreme position is one of intense 
joy, based on a moral activity (as in 12%, where the passive side 
of the moral effort is emphasized). 

The sixth (vv.!012) quotation is from Ps 102?6-?8 which in A 
runs thus: | 


SiS is Se N 2 , , 8 \ “ > / 
Kat apxas® ov, Kipre,? tH ynv eOepnedXiwoas, 
lal ‘ 
Kal €_pya TOV XELPOV TOU €ioLY Ol OYpayot’ 
> \ 4 > » n~ \ be 6 / 
avtoit aroXotvrat, ov d€ drapevets, 
td 
Kal TavTEs WS luatiov TarAaLwOycovTat, 
Nae \ , Sg SAN i “9 , : 
Kal oe tepiBdraov €Ai~es adrovs Kal dAAayyoovTat 
\ Ve a > N \ » > > , 
col € 6 abros «i, Kal TA ETN TOV OVK ExXeiWovcw. 


The author, for purposes of emphasis (as in 21%), has thrown 
ov to the beginning of the sentence, and in the last line he has 
reverted to the more natural ov (B). In the text of the epistle 
there are only two uncertain readings, for the proposed change 
of diaévers into the future diapevets (vg. permanebis) does not 
really affect the sense, and D*’s as for aceé is a merely stylistic 
alteration. In }** two small points of textual uncertainty emerge. 
(a) éXtéers (A B D° K L P M fu Syr arm sah boh eth Orig. Chrys.) 
has been altered into dAAdfers (N* D* 327. g19 vt Tert. Ath.). 
The same variant occurs in LXX, where dAAdgers is read by & 
for éd/€es, which may have crept into the text from Is 34%, but is 
more likely to have been altered into dAAdges in view of dAAayn- 
govrat (éAvynoovrat, arm). (6) ds ipdriov (X A B D* 1739 vt arm 
eth) after airovs is omitted by D*° M vg syr sah boh Chrys. Ath. 
Cyril Alex. Probably the words are due to homoioteleuton. If 
retained, a comma needs to be placed after them (so Zimmer.) ; 
they thus go with the preceding phrase, although one early ren- 
dering (Dd) runs: ‘(and) like a garment they will be changed.” 

The psalm is taken as a messianic oracle (see Bacon in Zert¢- 
schrift fiir adie neutest. Wissenschaft, 1902, 280-285), which the 
Greek version implied, or at any rate suggested; it contained 
welcome indications of the Son in his creative function and also, 
of his destined triumph. The poetical suggestion of the sky as 
a mantle of the deity occurs in Philo, who writes (de fuga, 20) 

1 yplw, in contrast to ddeldw, is exclusively metaphorical in NT (cp, Gray 
in #47. 173), although neither Latin nor English is able to preserve the 
distinction. 

2 A classical and Philonic equivalent for év dpy7 (LXX again in Ps 1191), 


8 This title, which attracted our author, is an addition of the LXX, 
4 Including % v7, but with special reference to of odpavoil. 


I. 12-14. | THE SON AND THE ANGELS 15 


that the Logos évdverat @s eo Ota Tov Koopov" ynv yap Kal Vowp Kal 
dépa Kal wip Kal TA ek TOUTWY erapmicxerat, But the quotation is 
meant to bring out generally (i) the superiority of the Son as 
creative (so v.”) to the creation, and (ii) his permanence amid 
the decay of nature ;! the world wears out,? even the sky (1276) 
is cast aside, and with it the heavenly lights, but the Son remains 
(“thou art thou,” boh); nature is at his mercy, not he at 
nature’s. The close connexion of angels with the forces of 
nature (v.”) may have involved the thought that this transiency 
affects angels as well, but our author does not suggest this. 

The final biblical proof (v.!%) is taken from Ps 1101, a psalm 
in which later on the writer is to find rich messianic suggestion. 
The quotation clinches the argument for the superiority of the Son 
by recalling (v.°) his unique divine commission and authority : 

3 To what angel did he ever say, 

‘* Sit at my right hand, 
till IT make your enemies a footstool for your feet” ? 


14 Are not all angels merely spirtts in the divine service, commissioned for 
the benefit of those who are to inherit salvation ? 


The Greek couplet — 


/ 2 os 
kaflov éx defvav pov, 
g Xv ” \ > ie ¢€ / a A 
ews av OH tovs éxOpovs cov tromdd.ov TaV TodaV GoD, 


corresponds exactly to the LXX ; D* omits dy as in Ac 2%5, The 
martial metaphor is (cp. Introd. pp. xxxiii f.) one of the primitive 
Christian expressions which survive in the writer’s vocabulary 
(cp. 1o}), 

The subordinate position of angels is now (v.14) summed up; 
mdévres—all without distinction—are simply Aetroupytxa mvedpata 
(without any power of ruling) eis Sakoviay dmootehMAdpeva (Com- 
missioned, not acting on their own initiative). According to the 
Mechilta on Ex 141%, the Israelites, when crossing the Red Sea, 
were shown ‘“‘ squadrons upon squadrons of ministering angels” 
(nwa "NPD by non MwA); cp. Heb. of Sir 437, and 
Dieterich’s Mithrasliturgie, p. 6, line 14, } api Tod AecroupyotvTos 
dvéuov (see above, v.”). Philo speaks of dyyeAoe Aectoupyot (de 
virtutibus, 74), Of Tovs brodiaKxovovs adtod Trav duvdpewr ayyéXous (de 
templo, 1), and in de plantatione, 4: Mwons dé dvopnati ebbvBdru 
xXpwpevos ayyéXovs mpocayopever, mperBevopevas Kal diayyeAdovoas 

1 A pre-Christian Upanishad (Sacred Books of East, xv. 266) cries: ‘* Only 


when men shall roll up the sky like a hide, will there be an end of misery, 
unless God has first been known.” 

2 radatodcbat is a common word with iudriov, and the wearing-out of 
clothes is a favourite metaphor for men (Is 50°, Sir 1417) as well as for nature 
(Is 51°). ILepeBodatov is any covering for the body ; not simply a veil (1 Co 
11'°), but a generic term (cp. Ps 104° d8vacos ws iudriov Td repiBddrarov avrod). 

® B reads diaxovias, as in 8° juépacs for juépe. 


16 THE EPISTLE TQ THE HEBREWS [I. 14. 


Td TE Tapa TOV HyEeLovos ToIs bryKdaLs ayaGd Kai TH Bacir€l dy ciow 
ot tayKoor xpetor. ‘ Angels of the (divine) ministry” was a com- 
mon rabbinic term, and the writer concludes here that the angels 
serve God, not, as Philo loved to argue, in the order of -nature, 
but in promoting the interests of God’s people ; this is the main 
object of their existence. He ignores the Jewish doctrine voiced 
in Test. Levi 35, that in (the sixth?) heaven the angels of the 
Presence (of Aecroupyotvres Kat eEtAacKkdpevot pos KUpLov él TacaLs 
tais dyvoiais Tov dixaiwy) sacrifice and intercede for the saints, 
just as in 114-12! he ignores the companion doctrine that the 
departed saints interceded for the living. Later Christian specu- 
lation revived the Jewish doctrine of angels interceding for men 
and mediating their prayers, but our author stands deliberately 
apart from this. Heaven has its myriads of angels (12%), but 
the entire relation of men to God depends upon Christ. Angels 
are simply servants (Aeroupyol, v.7) of God’s saving purpose for 
mankind ; how these ‘‘angels and ministers of grace” further it, 
the writer never explains. He would not have gone as far as 
Philo, at any rate (dyyeAou . . . tepai kat Octar pioeis, drodidKovor 
Kal Urapxot TOD rpwrov Geod, d: dv ola mperBevtav doa dv Gedjon 
TO yever HudV TpocHecriaa diayyedAre, de Abrahamo, 23). 

In 814 tods péANovTas KAnpovopety wtynptay (KA. cwr. Only here 
in NT), it is remarkable that cwrypia is mentioned for the first 
time without any adjective or explanation. Evidently it had 
already acquired a specific Christian meaning for the readers as 
well as for the writer; no definition was required to differentiate 
the Christian significance of the term from the current usage. 
As owrnpia involves the sacrificial work of Christ (who is never 
called cwryp), it cannot be applied to the pre-Christian period 
of revelation. Indeed in our epistle cwrnpia is invariably eschato- 
logical. The outlook in the messianic oracles already quoted is 
one of expectation; some future deliverance at the hands of 
God or his messianic representative is anticipated. MéAAovras 
implies a divine purpose, as in 8° 11°, 

The phrase about tots pédAovtas KAnpovopety owrnpiay marks a 
skilful transition to the deeper theme of the next passage, viz. the 
relation of the Son to this cwrypia (on 21° cp. W. Robertson Smith 
in Expositor, i. pp. 138f.). But the transition is worked out in 
a practical warning (2!) to the readers, which not only explains 
the underlying interest of the preceding biblical proofs, but leads 
up effectively to the next aspect of truth which he has in mind: 


1 We must therefore (5a todro, in view of this pre-eminent authority of 
the Son) pay closer attention to what we have heard, in case we drift away. 
2 For if the divine word spoken by angels held good (éyévero BéBatos, proved 
valid), zf transgression and disobedience met with due (évd.cov =adequate, not 
arbitrary) punishment in every case, * how shall we (huets, emphatic) escape 


II. 1.] ATTENDING TO CHRISTIANITY ed, 


the penalty for neglecting (duedjoarres, if we ignore: Mt 225) a@ salvation 
which (iris, inasmuch as it) was origtnally proclaimed by the Lord himself (not 
by mere angels) azd guaranteed to us by those who heard him, * while God 
corroborated their testimony with signs and wonders and a variety of miracu- 
lous powers, distributing the holy Spirit as tt pleased him (avrod emphatic as 
in Ro 3%). 

Apart from the accidental omission of v.! by M 1739, Origen, and of re 
(M P) in v.4, with the variant mapappvapev (B° D°) for rapapvduer,? the only 
textual item of any moment, and it isa minor one, is the substitution of 76 for 
did in v.* by some cursives (69. 623. 1066. 1845), due either to the following 
bird, or to the dogmatic desire of emphasizing the initiative of 6 kvpios. But 
did here as in 60 adyyéAwy, meaning ‘‘ by,” is used to preserve the idea that 
in Aadetv the subject is God (11). The order of words (v.') de? repiccorepds 
mpocéxew judas has been spoiled in & vg (wepiooorep@s det) and K L P (jyuas 
Tpooéxewv), 


As elsewhere in Hellenistic Greek (e.g. Jos. Apion. i. 1, émet 
dé cvyvors 6pG tals tr Sucpeveias id Twwv elpnuwevats TpocéexXovTas 
Braodypiats kat Trois wept tHv “Apxaoroylav tm’ é“od yeypappeévors 
amuotouvtas KTA.; Strabo, ii. I. 7, Tots pev amioreiv . . . exeivy Oe 
Mpowéxelv), Tpoaexerv (sc. TOv vovtv) is the opposite of dmoreiv: 
to ‘attend ” is to believe and act upon what is heard. This is 
implied even in Ac 8° and 16! (zpocéyew rots AaAovpévors bd 
IIavAov) where it is the attention of one who hears the gospel 
for the first time; here it is attention to a familiar message. 
Neptocotépws is almost in its elative sense of “with extreme 
care”; “all the more” would bring out its force here as in 13}9. 
Certainly there is no idea of demanding a closer attention to the 
gospel than to the Law. ‘“Hpas=we Christians (7piv, 11), you and 
I, asin v.32. The ra dxovaGérra. (in tots dxouobetar) is the revela- 
tion of the eduyyéAvov (a term never used by our author), ze. 
what 6 eds éAdAnoey Hpiv ev vid, 11, and this is further defined 
(in vv.* #) as consisting in the initial revelation made by Jesus on 
earth and the transmission of this by divinely accredited envoys 
to the writer and his readers (eis judas éBeBaw6y). In the Zp. 
Aristeas, 127, oral teaching is preferred to reading (ro yap xadds 
Chv év TG 7a vopipa cuvtrypety elvar' TovTo dé emiteAetobar Oud TAS 
akpodcews TOAAG padrdov 7 da THs avayvocews), and the evange- 
lists of v.4 include ofrwes éAdAnoay ipiv tov Adyov Tod Heod (13°); 
but while the news was oral, there is no particular emphasis as 
that here. The author simply appeals for attentive obedience, 
py Tote tapapu@pev (2 aor. subj.), z.e. drift away from (literally, 
“be carried past” and so lose) the owrtypia which we have 
heard. ILapapém in this sense goes back to Pr 3%! vié, uy 
Tapapuns, THpNnTOoV Oe evry BovAnyv Kat evvorav (see Clem. FPaed. 11. 


1 éxpevédueda, without an object (xplua rod Geob, Ro 2°) as 12, Sir 1615, 
eaves 

2 Arm apparently read torepjowuev, and P. Junius needlessly conjectured 
wapacup@uev (‘* pervert them”). 


2 


18 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS [II. 2. 


xi. 58, 81d kal ovoréAdew xp?) TAS yuvatkas Koopiws Kal repiodiyyeL 
aidot cHppovl, (7) TapappvHor THs aAnOetas); indeed the writer 
may have had the line of Proverbs in mind, as Chrys. suggested. 

The verb may have lost its figurative meaning, and may have been simply 
an equivalent for ‘‘going wrong,” like ‘‘labi” in Latin (cp. Cicero, De 
Offictes, i. 6, ‘‘labi autem, errare . . . malumet turpe ducimus”). Anyhow 
mpocéxecv must not be taken in a nautical sense (=moor), in order to round 
off the ‘‘drift away” of wapapéw, a term which carries a sombre significance 
here (=maparlrrew, 6°); pnmore mapapuauev, TouréoTt wh arokwpueda, wy 
éxtréswuev (Chrysostom). 


In vv. we have a characteristic (e.g. 108-31) argument a minori 
ad matus ; if, as we know from our bible (the bible being the Greek 
OT), every infringement of the Sinaitic legislation was strictly 
punished —a legislation enacted by means of angels—how much 
more serious will be the consequences of disregarding such a 
(great, rnAtkavTn) cwrnpia as that originally proclaimed by the 
Lord himself! The ryAtccatry is defined as (a) “directly in- 
augurated by the Kvpros himself,” and (4) transmitted to us 
unimpaired by witnesses who had a rich, supernatural endow- 
ment; it is as if the writer said, ““Do not imagine that the 
revelation has been weakened, or that your distance from the 
life of Jesus puts you in any inferior position ; the full power of 
God’s Spirit has been at work in the apostolic preaching to which 
we owe our faith.” 


The reference in Adéyos is to the Mosaic code, not, as Schoettgen thought, 
to such specific orders of angels as the admonitions to Lot and his wife. 

Adyos is used, not vouos, in keeping with the emphasis upon 
the divine Aadecty in the context, and, instead of vouos Macéws 
(108), 6 dv’ dyyéAwy AadyOeis Adyos is chosen for argumentative 
reasons. Here as in Gal 3! and Ac 78 53 (éX\aBere rov vomov eis 
duatayas dyyéAwv) the function of angels in the revelation of the 
Law at Sinai is assumed, but without any disparaging tone such 
as is overheard in Paul’s reference. The writer and his readers 
shared the belief, which first appeared in Hellenistic Judaism, 
that God employed angels at Sinai. Josephus (Azz. xv. 136, 
Hhpav Oo ta Kadota Tdv Soypdrwv Kal Ta GoudTaTa TOV év ToIs 
vopos Ou ayyéAwv rapa Tod Geod paldvrwv)} repeats this tradition, 
but it went back to the LXX which altered Dt 33? into a definite 
proof of angelic co-operation (é« def.dv atrod dyyeAo per’ aitod) 
and brought this out in Ps 684%. Rabbinic tradition elaborated 
the idea. The writer, however, would not have claimed, like 
Philo (de vita Mosis, 2°), that the Mosaic legislation was BéBa.a, 
aodéXevta, valid and supreme as long as the world endured. 


1 This is from a speech of Herod inciting the Jews to fight bravely. ‘In 
such a speech,” as Robertson Smith observed, ‘fone does not introduce 
doubtful points of theology.” The tenet was firmly held. 


IT. 2, 3. | THE COMING OF CHRISTIANITY 19 


NapdBacts kal mapakor form one idea (see on 11); as rapaxoy 
(which is not a LXX term) denotes a disregard of orders or of 
appeals (cp. Clem. Hom. x. 13, «i ézi wapaxon Adywv kpiors yiverat, 
and the use of the verb in Mt 18!" éav d€ rapakovoyn airov krA., 
or in LXX of Is 651? éAdAyoe kal rapnKkovcare), it represents the 
negative aspect, mapdBaots the positive. MucOarodocta is a 
sonorous synonym (rare in this sombre sense of xdAaovs) for 
puoOes or for the classical pucfodocia. Some of the facts which 
the writer has in mind are mentioned in 3!” and 1078. The Law 
proved no dead letter in the history of God’s people; it enforced 
pains and penalties for disobedience. 

In v.? dpy}v AaBodoa is a familiar Hellenistic phrase; cp. e.g. 
Philo in Quaest. in Exod. 127 (6rav ot tév oraptav Kaprrol Tedew- 
Gdow, ot tov dévdpwv yevérews apxnv AauBavovewy), and de vita 
Mosis, 1* (riv apxnv tod yeverbor AaBov év Aiyirtw). The 
writer felt, as Plutarch did about Rome, ra ‘Pwpaiwv rpdypara 
ovk av éevtatda mpovBy duvdpews, wi) Ociav Twa apynv AaBdvTa Kat 
pndev peéeya pnde tapddofov €xovoav. The modern mind wonders 
how the writer could assume that the owrnpia, as he conceives 
it, was actually preached by Jesus on earth. But he was un- 
conscious of any such difference. The Christian revelation was 
made through the Jesus who had lived and suffered and ascended, 
and the reference is not specifically to his teaching, but to his 
personality and career, in which God’s saving purpose came to 
full expression. Ot dkodcavtes means those who heard Jesus 
himself, the atrdérrat of Lk 11-4 (cp. the shorter conclusion to 
Mark’s gospel: pera d€ ratra Kai airds 6 “Iycots .. . efaréc- 
TetAev Ou atTav TO lepov Kat apOaprov Kypvypa THs aiwviov cwrnpias). 
If the Sinaitic Law éyévero BéBatos, the Christian revelation was 
also confirmed or guaranteed to us—eis fjpas (1 P 175 76 pyua 7d 
evayyeAuoGev eis duas: Ac 2% “Incotvy.. . avdpa ard Tov Oeod 
amodederypévov eis tas) €BeBarsOy. It reached us, accurate and 
trustworthy. No wonder, when we realize the channel along which 
it flowed. It was authenticated by the double testimony of men} 
who had actually heard Jesus, and of God who attested and 
inspired them in their mission. Xuverupaptupetvy means “ assent ” 
in £f. Aristeas, 191, and “corroborate” in the de Mundo, 400a 
(cuveripaptypet d¢ Kat 6 Bios amas), as usual, but is here a 
sonorous religious term for ovppaprupety (Ro 81°), ‘ Coniunctio 
ovv ... hunc habet sensum, nos in fide euangelii confirmari 
symphonia quadam Dei et hominum” (Calvin). 

1In bd trav dxovedvTwv, tard is used, as invariably throughout IIpds 
‘E8palous, of persons, which is a proof of good Greek. ‘‘ There is no more 
certain test of the accuracy of individual Greek writers than their use of the 
passives (or equivalent forms) with té and agenitive. In the best writers this 


genitive almost invariably denotes personal, or at least ving objects” (W. J. 
Hickie, on Andocides, De Mysterits, § 14). 


20 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS [1I. 4. 


on., TEp., Suv. in the reverse order describe the miracles of Jesus in Ac 
2° ; here they denote the miracles of the primitive evangelists as in 2 Co 12). 
Philo, speaking of the wonderful feats of Moses before the Pharaoh, declares 
that signs and wonders are a plainer proof of what God commands than any 
verbal injunction (dre 6% rod Geot rpavorépas xpnouay amodelfeot Tais dia 
onuelwv kal Tepdtwv 7d BovAnua dedndwxdros, vzt. Mos. i. 16). 

As “God” (Geod) is the subject of the clause, adrod (for which 
D actually reads Geo) refers to him, and mvevparos ayiov is the 
genitive of the object after pepiopots (cp. 64). What is dis- 
tributed is the Spirit, in a variety of endowments. To take 
avtov with mvevuaros and make the latter the genitive of the 
subject, would tally with Paul’s description of the Spirit dcarpoty 
idia éxdotw kabws BovrAerat (t Co 1214), but would fail to explain 
what was distributed and would naturally require 7@ pepicpo. 
A fair parallel lies in Gal 3° 6 émtyopyyav tpiv 76 rvedpa Kat 
éevepyav Ovvdpes év tyuiv, where duvdyes also means “ miraculous’ 
powers” or ‘“‘mighty deeds” (a Hellenistic sense, differing from 
that of the LXX=‘“‘forces”). In kara thy adrod dna, 
as perhaps even in 738 (cp. Blass, 284. 3; Abbott’s Johannine 
Grammar, 2558), the possessive airdés is emphatic. OéAnow is 
read by 8 R for déyow in Ps 21% (cp. Ezk 2873 pn OeAjoe 
deAnow). It is not merely a vulgarism for OéAnua. ‘ @eAnua 
nest pas GéAnous, volonté; OeAnua désigne le vouloir concentré 
sur un moment, sur un acte, l’ordre, le commandment” (Psichari, 
Essai sur le grec de la Septante, 1908, p. 171n.). The writer is 
fond of such forms (e.g. aOérnows, aAnows, aiveots, perabects, 
mpoaxvots). Naturally the phrase has a very different meaning 
from the similar remark in Lucian, who makes Hesiod (D%s- 
putatio cum Ffesiode, 4) apologize for certain omissions in his 
poetry, by pleading that the Muses who inspired him gave their 
gifts as they pleased—ai Oeat dé tas éavtdv dwpeds ols te dv eédwor. 

The vital significance of the Son as the dpynyos of this 
‘‘salvation”! by means of his sufferings on earth, is now devel- 
oped (vv.°18). This unique element in the Son has been already 
hinted (13), but the writer now proceeds to explain it as the core of 
Christ’s pre-eminence. The argument starts from the antithesis 
between the Son and angels (v.°); presently it passes beyond 
this, and angels are merely mentioned casually in a parenthesis 
(v.16). The writer is now coming to the heart of his theme, how 
and why the Son or Lord, of whom he has been speaking, 
suffered, died, and rose. Vv.*° are the prelude to vv.10-18. The 
idea underlying the whole passage is this : Aadeto@at 81a Tod Kuptou 
meant much more than Aadrcioba dv’ ayyéAwv, for the Christian 
revelation of owrnpia had involved a tragic and painful experi- 
ence for the Son on earth as he purged sins away. His present 
superiority to angels had been preceded by a period of mortal 

1JIn A x of Is 96 the messiah is called rarnp rod uédXovros aldvos. 


II. 5-9. | THE SON AS SUPREME 21 


experience on earth év tais epars THs oapKos airov. But this 
sojourn was only for a time; it was the vital presupposition of 
his triumph; it enabled him to die a death which invested him 
with supreme power on behalf of his fellow-men; and it taught 
him sympathy (cp. Zimmer, in Studien und Kritiken, 1882, 
pp. 413f., on 215, and in VZVichen Studien, 1. pp. 20-129, on 
26-18), 


5 For the world to come, of which I (jets of authorship) am speaking, 
was not put under the control of angels (whatever may be the case with the 
present world). © One writer, as we know, has affirmed, 

‘* What ts man, that thou art mindful of him? 
or the son of man, that thou carest for him? 
1 For a little while thou hast put him lower than the angels, 
crowning him with glory and honour, 
8 putting all things under his feet.” 
Now by} ‘putting all things under him” * the writer meant to leave nothing 
out of his control. But, as it ts, we do not yet see ‘‘ all things controlled” by 
man; * what we do see ts Jesus ‘who was put lower than the angels for a 
little while” to suffer death, and who has been ‘‘ crowned with glory and 
honour,” that by God’s grace he might taste death for everyone. 


Od yap dyyédots (ydp, as in Greek idiom, opening a new 
question; almost equivalent to ‘‘now”: od ydép=non certe, 
Valckenaer) dmérage (2.e. 6 Oeds, as C vg add)—the writer is 
already thinking of téragas in the quotation which he is about 
to make. In the light of subsequent allusions to péAdovra ayaba 
(g4 101) and 7 péAXovoa 76ALs (1314), we see that thy oikoupevny 
Th »é\Noucay means the new order of things in which the owrnpia 
of 114 22-3 is to be realized (see 98), and from which already 
influences are pouring down into the life of Christians. The 
latter allusion is the pivot of the transition. The powers and 
spiritual experiences just mentioned (in v.*) imply this higher, 
future order of things (cp. 645 especially dvvapes tre peAXovTos 
ai@vos), from which rays stream down into the present. How 
the ministry of angels is connected with them, we do not learn. 
But the author had already urged that this service of angels was 
rendered to the divine authority, and that it served to benefit 
Christians (1!*), This idea starts him afresh. Who reigns in 
the new order? Not angels but the Son, and the Son who has 
come down for a time into human nature and suffered death. 
He begins by quoting a stanza from a psalm which seems 
irrelevant, because it compares men and angels. In reality this 
is not what occupies his mind; otherwise he might have put his 
argument differently and used, for example, the belief that 
Christians would hold sway over angels in the next world 
(1 Co 6? 8), 

1 év r@ (sc. Aévyew, as 819), 

# The omission of this air@ by B d e arm does not alter the sense. 


22 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS [II. 5-7. 


Philo (de ofificto, 29, ob map bcov tararov yéyovev dvOpwros, dia Thy Takey 
7dTTwrat) argues that man is not inferior in position because he was created 
last in order; but this refers to man in relation to other creatures, not in rela- 
tion to angels, as here. 


The quotation (vv.%8) from the 8th psalm runs: 
ter + 4 , 1 > an 
Ti éoti avOpwrros OTe popvyoKn+ avror, 
H vids avOpwrov ott érurKxértn adrov; 
3 , ips , ars , 
HAaTTwWaas aviTov Bpaxv TL wap ayyeAous, 
d0&n kal tiny eotepadvwoas adrov. 
TavTa vréeTakas VTOKATW TMV TOOBY avTOD. 


The LXX tr. o'nds not incorrectly by dyyéAous, since the elohim 
of the original probably included angels. ‘This was the point of 
the quotation, for the author of Hebrews. The text of the 
quotation offers only a couple of items. (a) ri is changed into 
ris (LXX A) by C* P 104. 917. 1288. 1319. 1891. 2127 vt boh, - 
either in conformity to the preceding tis or owing to the feeling 
that the more common zis (in questions, e.g. 12’, Jn 12°4) suited 
the reference to Christ better (Bleek, Zimmer). (4) The quota- 
tion omits kal Katéorynoas avrov éri Ta épya Tov xeipov aov before 
mdavra: it is inserted by % AC D* M P syr lat boh arm eth Euth. 
Theodt. Sedul. to complete the quotation. It is the one line in 
the sentence on which the writer does not comment ; probably 
he left it out as incompatible with 11° (épya rav xeipoav cov ciow 
ot ovpavot), although he frequently quotes more of an OT passage 
than is absolutely required for his particular purpose. 

In 8tepaptépato S€ mov tis (v.°), even if the d€ is adversative, 
it need not be expressed in English idiom. diapaptupeto ar in 
Greek inscriptions ‘‘ means primarily to address an assembly ora 
king” (Hicks, in Classical Review, i. 45). Here, the only place 
where it introduces an OT quotation, it =attest or affirm. Ilov tis 
in such a formula is a literary mannerism familiar in Philo (De 
Ebriet. 14: etre yap mov ts), and wov later on (4*) recurs in a 
similar formula, as often in Philo. The ts implies no modifica- 
tion of the Alexandrian theory of inspiration; his words are God’s 
words (v.8). The psalm intends no contrast between 7Adtrwcas 
xrA. and 86€9 . . . éorepdvwoasaitév. The proof that this wonder- 
ful being has been created in a position only slightly inferior to 
that of the divine host lies in the fact that he is crowned king 
of nature, invested with a divine authority over creation. The 
psalm is a panegyric on man, like Hamlet’s (‘‘ What a piece of 
work is man! how noble in reason! how infinite in faculties! in 
form and moving how express and admirable! in action how like 
an angel!” etc.), but with a religious note of wonder and gratitude 
to God. In applying the psalm, however, our writer takes Bpaxv tu 


1 uiuvioky means mindfulness shown in act, and émicxérry, as always in 
the NT, denotes personal care. 


II. 7, 8.] HUMILIATION AND HONOUR 23 


in the sense of ‘‘temporarily ” rather than “slightly,” and so has 
to make the “inferiority ” and ‘‘ exaltation ” two successive phases, 
in applying the description to the career of Jesus. He does not take 
this verse as part of a messianic ode; neither here nor elsewhere 
does he use the term “Son of Man.” He points out, first of 
all (v.8) that, as things are (viv 8€ oUmw: o¥ tw =ov tws might be 
read, z.e. “‘in no wise,” and viv taken logically instead of temporally ; 
but this is less natural and pointed), the last words are still unful- 
filled; oUmw Spwyev abt (7.2. man) Ta “‘mdvta” (Ze. 7) olkoupevy 
h wéAXovoa) Swotetaypeva. Human nature is not ‘‘crowned with 
glory and honour” at present. How can it be, when the terror 
of death and the devil (v.15) enslaves it? What is to be said, 
then? This, that although we do not see man triumphant, there 
is something that we do see: Bdémopev “Inoody dealing triumph- 
antly with death on man’s behalf (v.°). The ’Ijcotv comes in 
with emphasis, as in 3! and 12%, at the end of a preliminary 
definition tov . . . mAaTTwpEvoy. 

It is less natural to take the messianic interpretation which 
involves the reference of atr@ already to him. On this view, the 
writer frankly allows that the closing part of the prophecy is still 
unfulfilled. ‘‘ We do not yet see 74 mdvta under the sway of Jesus 
Christ, for the world to come has not yet come; it has only been 
inaugurated by the sacrifice of Christ (1° xaapirpov tOv dpaptidv 
moinoapevos exdbicer ev deEig THS meyadwovrvys ev dbWyAots). Though 
the Son is crowned (1° °) and enthroned (118 xafov ék defidv pov), 
his foes are still to be subdued (éws dv 06 rods éxOpovs cov tromdd.ov 
TOV ToOaV gov), and we must be content to wait for our full cwrypia 
(978) at his second coming; under the ovrw ép@pev xrA. of experi- 
ence there is a deeper experience of faith.” The writer rather 
turns back in v.® to the language of v.’; this at least has been 
fulfilled. _/esws has been put lower than the angels and he has been 
crowned. How and why? The writer answers the second ques- 
tion first. Or rather, in answering the second he suggests the 
answer to the first. At this point, and not till then, the messianic 
interpretation becomes quite natural and indeed inevitable. It 
is the earlier introduction of it which is unlikely. The application 
to the messiah of words like those quoted in v.® is forced, and 
*‘ Hebrews” has no room for the notion of Christ as the ideal or 
representative Man, as is implied in the messianic interpretation 
of airé in v.8. That interpretation yields a true idea—the 
thought expressed, ¢e.g., in T. E. Brown’s poem, ‘‘Sad! Sad!”— 

“One thing appears to me— 
The work is not complete ; 
One world I know, and see 
It is not at His feet— 
Not, not! Is this the sum ?” 


24 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS [II. 8. 


No, our author hastens to add, it is not the sum; our outlook is 
not one of mere pathos; we do see Jesus enthroned, with the 
full prospect of ultimate triumph. But the idea of the issues of 
Christ’s triumph being still incomplete is not true here. What 
is relevant, and what is alone relevant, is the decisive character of 
his sacrifice. The argument of v.® 9%, therefore, is that, however 
inapplicable to man the rhapsody of the psalm is, at present, the 
words of the psalm are true, notwithstanding. For we see the 
Jesus who was “put lower than the angels for a little while” to 
suffer death (81a 75 wéOnpa Tod Oavdrou must refer to the death of 
Jesus himself! not to the general experience of death as the 
occasion for his incarnation), now ‘crowned with glory and 
honour.” When 814 76 1éOnpoa Tod Oaydrou is connected with what 
follows (86&q kal Tinf €otepavwpévoy), it gives the reason for the 
exaltation, not the object of the incarnation (= «is ro mwacyxewv). 
But dud . . . Gavarov is elucidated ina moment by 67ws . . . Gavdrov. 
V.° answers the question why Jesus was lowered and exalted—it 
was for the sake of mankind. In v.! the writer proceeds to ex- 
plain how he was ‘‘ lowered ”—it was by suffering that culminated 
in death. Then he recurs naturally to the ‘“‘why.” The mixture 
of quotation and comment in v.® leaves the meaning open to some 
dubiety, although the drift is plain. ‘‘ But one Being referred to in 
the psalm (rév . . . AAaTTwpEvov) we do see—it is Jesus, and Jesus 
as nAatTwpevoy for the purpose of suffering death, and 84€y cat rip 
éorehaywpevov. Why did he die? Why was he thus humiliated 
and honoured? For the sake of every man; his death was drep 
mavros, part of the divine purpose of redemption.” ‘Thus émas.. . 
Gavdrou explains and expounds the idea of é:a 76 ra6npua (which 
consists in) rod avarov, gathering up the full object and purpose 
of the experience which has just been predicated of Jesus. This 
implies a pause after éorehavwpévoy, or, as Bleek suggests, the 
supplying of an idea like 6 éa@ev before dws xrA., if yevonrat is to 
be taken, as it must be, as= “‘he might taste.” Howa dzws clause 
follows and elucidates 64 «rA. may be seen in ZA. Arist. 106 (dva 
Tous év Tals ayveiais OvTas, dws pyndevds Oryyavwcw). 


As for v.88, Paul makes a similar comment (1 Co 15”), but excludes God 
from the 7&4 mdvra. The curiously explicit language here is intended to 
reiterate what is possibly hinted at in v.®, viz., that the next world has no 
room for the angelic control which characterizes the present. (The ra mdvra 
includes even angels!) This belief was familiar to readers of the Greek 
bible, where Dt 32° voices a conception of guardian-angels over the non- 
Jewish nations which became current in some circles of the later Judaism, 
Non-Jewish Christians, like the readers of our epistle, would be likely to 
appreciate the point of an argument which dealt with this. Note that 
dvuréraxroy occurs in a similar antithesis in Epictetus, ii. 10. 1, ra’ry Ta 


1 But not, as the Greek fathers, etc., supposed, as if it was the fact of hir 
death (and stay in the underworld) that lowered him (61é4=on account of). 


II. 9.] THE DEATH OF JESUS 26 


ddd\a vmroretaypéva, al’tyy & ddovevTov kal avuwéraxrov. Our author’s 
language reads almost like a tacit repudiation of Philo’s remark on Gn 1% in 
de opificto Mundi (28), that God put man over all things with the exception 
of the heavenly beings—éca yap Ovnra év Trois rpiol aroxelos yy dare dépr 
mwdvra wrératrev al’t@,. Ta Kar’ ovpavdy vreteAduevos Gre Sevdrepas polpas 
érihaxovra, 


The closing clause of v.® (6mws xdpite Ped inép Tavtds yevon- 
tat Gaydrou), therefore, resumes and completes the idea of é:a 7d 
méOnua tov Gavdrov. Each follows a phrase from the psalm ; 
but dmws . . . Gavarov does not follow éorehavwpévov logically. 
The only possible method of thus taking dzws xrA. would be 
by applying O09 kai tip éeorehavwpevoy to Christ’s life prior to 
death, either (a) to his pre-incarnate existence, when “in the 
counsels of heaven” he was, as it were, ‘crowned for death” 
(so Rendall, who makes yevoac@at Oavarov cover the ‘inward 
dying” of daily self-denial and suffering which led up to Calvary), 
or (4) to his incarnate life (so, e.g., Hofmann, Milligan, Bruce), as 
if his readiness to sacrifice himself already threw a halo round 
him, or (¢) specifically to God’s recognition and approval of him 
at the baptism and transfiguration (Dods). But the use of ddéa 
in v./ tells against such theories; it is from another angle 
altogether that Jesus is said in 2 P 1!” to have received tipi Kal 
ddgav from God at the transfiguration. The most natural inter- 
pretation, therefore, is to regard ddé) . . . éorehavwpévoy as 
almost parenthetical], rounding off the quotation from the psalm. 
It is unnecessary to fall back on such suggestions as (i) to assume 
a break in the text after éorehavwpévov, some words lost which led 
up to dmws . . . Gavarov (Windisch), or (11) to translate ézws by 
‘“‘how,” as in Lk 24”, ze. ““we see how Jesus tasted death” (so 
Blass, boldly reading éyevcaro), or by ‘‘after that” or “when” 
(Moses Stuart), as in Soph. Oed. Col. 1638 (where, however, it 
takes the indicative as usual), etc. 


In brép ravrés, wavréds was at an early stage taken as neuter, practi- 
cally=the universe. This was a popular idea in Egyptian Christianity. 
‘You know,” says the risen Christ to his disciples, in a Bohairic narrative 
of the death of Joseph (Zexts and Studies, iv. 2. 130), ‘*that many times 
now I have told you that I must needs be crucified and taste death for the 
universe.” The interpretation occurs first in Origen, who (2% Joan. i. 35) 
writes: ‘‘He is a ‘great highpriest’ [referring to Heb 4!°], having offered 
himself up in sacrifice once (dat) not for human beings alone, but for the 
rest of rational creatures as well (4A\a kal brép r&v AowrGv AoyixGy). ‘For 
without God he tasted death for everyone’ (xwpls yap Qce0d vrép mavrds 
éyevcaro Gavdrov). In some copies of the epistle to the Hebrews this passage 
runs: ‘for by the grace of God’ (xdpitt yap Geod). Well, if ‘without God 
he tasted death for everyone,’ he did not die simply for human beings, 
but for the rest of rational creatures as well; and if ‘ by the grace of God he 
tasted the death for everyone,’? he died for all except for God (xwpls 9¢00)— 
for ‘ by the grace of God he tasted death for everyone.’ It would indeed be 





1 Reading rod before vzrép. 


26 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS (II. 9. 


preposterous (dromov) to say that he tasted death for human sins and not also 
for any other being besides man who has fallen into sin—e.g. for the stars. 
Even the stars are by no means pure before God, as we read in the book of 
Job: ‘The stars are not pure before him,’ unless this is said hyperbolically. 
For this reason he is a ‘great highpriest,’ because he restores (droxa0loryot) 
all things to his Father’s kingdom, ordering it so that what is lacking in any 
part of creation is completed for the fulness of the Father’s glory (apds 76 
xwphoa Sdtav marpixyv).” The Greek fathers adhered steadily to this inter- 
pretation of mavrés as equivalent to the entire universe, including especially 
angels. But the neuter is always expressed in ‘‘ Hebrews” by the plural, with 
or without the article, and, as v.!® shows, the entire interest is in human 
beings. 

Tevonrat after brép wavrds has also been misinterpreted. Tevew in LXX, 
as a rendering of oyy, takes either genitive (I S 144, cp. 2 Mac 6”) or ac- 
cusative (1 S 14%, Job 34%), but yever@ar Oavdrov never occurs; it is the 
counterpart of the rabbinic phrase anm’> oyy, and elsewhere in the NT 
(Mk g'=Mt 16%=Lk 9”, Jn 8*) is used not of Jesus but of men. It 
means to experience (=/ldeiv Odvarov, 115). Here it is a bitter exper.ence, 
not a rapid sip, as if Jesus simply ‘‘ tasted” death (Chrysostom, Theophyl., 
Oecumenius: od yap évéwewev TO Oavdrw addAa pdvov avrdv tpdrov Twa 
ameyevoaro) quickly, or merely sipped it like a doctor sipping a drug to en- 
courage a patient. The truer comment would be: ‘‘ When [ think of our 
Lord as tasting death it seems to me as if He alone ever truly tasted death” 
(M‘Leod Campbell, Zhe Nature of the Atonement, p. 259); yevonrat does 
not echo Bpaxv 71, as though all that Jesus experienced of death was slight or 
short. 


The hardest knot of the hard passage lies in ydépure Oeov. In 
the second century two forms of the text were current, xwpic 
Oeoy and xapiti Gcoy. This is plain from Origen’s comment 
(see above); he himself is unwilling to rule out the latter 
reading, but prefers the former, which he apparently found to be 
the ordinary text. Theodoret assumed it to be original, as 
Ambrose did in the West. Jerome knew both (on Gal 3°), 
and the eighth century Anastasius Abbas read xwpis (“absque 
deo: sola enim divina natura non egebat”), z.e, in the sense 
already suggested by Fulgentius and Vigilius, that Christ’s divine 
nature did not die. On the other hand, writers like Eusebius, 
Athanasius, and Chrysostom never mention any other reading 
than xdpirt. Of all the supporters of ywpis, the most emphatic 
is Theodore of Mopsuestia, who protests that it is most absurd 
(yeAovdrarov) to substitute ydpire Oeod for ywpis Geod, arguing from 
passages like 1 Co 15! and Eph 2% that Paul’s custom is not 
to use the former phrase dai@s, dAAG ravtws did Twos akodovbids 
Aoyov. The reading suited the Nestorian view of the person of 
Christ, and probably the fact of its popularity among the 
Nestorians tended to compromise xwpis in the eyes of the later 
church ; it survives only in M 424**, though there is a trace of 
it (a Nestorian gloss?) in three codices of the Peshitto. But 
Oecumenius and Theophylact are wrong in holding that it 
Originated among the Nestorians. This is dogmatic prejudice; 


II. 9. | A DOUBTFUL READING aur 


xwpis was read in good manuscripts, if not in the best, by 
Origen’s time, and the problem is to determine whether it or 
xdpire was original. The one may be a transcriptional error for 
the other. In this case, the textual canon ‘potior lectio 
difficillima” would favour ywpis. But the canon does not apply 
rigidly to every such case, and the final decision depends upon 
the internal probabilities. Long associations render it difficult 
for a modern to do justice to xwpis Geov. Yet xwpis is elsewhere 
used by our author in a remarkable way, eg. in 978 ywpis 
dyuaptrias 6pOyoera1, and the question is whether xwpis deod here 
cannot be understood in an apt, although daring, sense. It 
may be (i) “forsaken by God,” an allusion to the “dereliction” 
of Mk 15%4 (B. Weiss, Zimmer), though this would rather be put 
as atep Oeod. (11) “Apart from his divinity” (see above), ie. 
when Christ died, his divine nature survived. But this would 
require a term like tys Oedryntos. (ili) Taken with zavros, ‘die 
for everyone (everything ?) except God” (Origen’s view, adopted 
recently by moderns like Ewald and Ebrard). Of these (i) and 
(iii) are alone tenable. Even if (iii) be rejected, it furnishes 
a clue to the problem of the origin of the reading. Thus 
Bengel and others modify it by taking trép wavrds=to master 
everything, xwpis Geod being added to explain that ‘ everything” 
does not include God. It is possible, of course, that in the 
Latin rendering (ut gratia Dei pro omnibus gustaret mortem) 
gratia is an original nominative, not an ablative, and repre- 
sents xdpis (Christ=the Grace of God),! which came to be 
altered into xwpis and ydpitt. But, if ywpis Geod is regarded as 
secondary, its origin probably lies in the dogmatic scruple of 
some primitive scribe who wrote the words on the margin as 
a gloss upon zravrds, or even on the margin of v.® opposite ovdev 
adnkev avT@ avuroraxtov, whence it slipped lower down into the 
text. Upon the whole, it seems fairest to assume that at some 
very early stage there must have been a corruption of the text, 
which cannot be explained upon the available data. But at 
any rate ydpire fits in well with ézpere, which immediately 
follows, and this is one point in its favour. It was xdpite Jeod 
that Jesus died for everyone, and this was consonant with God’s 
character (érperes yap aire, te. Geo). The nearest Latin 
equivalent for mpémov, as Cicero (de Officits, i. 26) said, was 
** decorum ” (dulce et decorum est pro patria mori), and in this 
high sense the divine xdpis (41°), shown in the wide range and 
object of the death of Jesus, comes out in the process and 
method. 

1It was so taken by some Latin fathers like Primasius and by later 


theologians of the Western church like Thomas of Aquinum and Sedulius 
Scotus, who depended on the Vulgate version. 


28 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS _[II. 10-18. 


The writer now explains (vv.10!8) why Jesus had to suffer 
and to die. Only thus could he save his brother men who lay 
(whether by nature or as a punishment, we are not told) under 
the tyranny of death. To die for everyone meant that Jesus had 
to enter human life and identify himself with men; suffering is 
the badge and lot of the race, and a Saviour must be a sufferer, 
if he is to carry out God’s saving purpose. The sufferings of 
Jesus were neither an arbitrary nor a degrading experience, but 
natural, in view of what he was to God and men alike. For the 
first time, the conception of suffering occurs, and the situation 
which gave rise to the author’s handling of the subject arose out 
of what he felt to be his readers’ attitude. ‘‘ We are suffering 
hardships on account of our religion.” But so did Jesus, the 
writer replies. ‘‘ Well, but was it necessary for him any more 
than for us? And if so, how does that consideration help us in 
our plight?” To this there is a twofold answer. (a) Suffering 
made Jesus a real Saviour; it enabled him to offer his perfect 
sacrifice, on which fellowship with God depends. (4) He suffered 
not only for you but like you, undergoing the same temptations 
to faith and loyalty as you have to meet. The threefold 
inference is: (i) do not give way, but realize all you have 
in his sacrifice, and what a perfect help and sympathy you 
can enjoy. (ii) Remember, this is a warning as well as an 
encouragement; it will be a fearful thing to disparage a 
religious tie of such privilege. (iii) Also, let his example 
nerve you. 


10 In bringing many sons to glory, tt was befitting that He for whom and 
by whom the universe exists, should perfect the Pioneer of thetr salvation by 
suffering (dua madnudrwv, echoing 61a 7d wdOnua Tot Oavdrov). 4 For 
sanctifier and sanctified have all one origin (é& Evos, sc. yevotds: neuter as Ac 
17°65), That ts why he (6 ayidgwr) zs not ashamed to call them brothers, 
12 saying, 

““T will proclaim thy name to my brothers, 
in the midst of the church I will sing of thee” ; 
13 and again, 
“© 7 will put my trust in him” ; 

and again, 

** Here am I and the children God has gtven me.” 

14 Since the children then (obv, resuming the thought of v.*) share blood 
and flesh, he himself participated in their nature,” so that by dying he might 
crush him who wields the power of death (that ts to say, the devil), ® and 
release from thraldom those who lay under a life-long fear of death. (For 
of course tt ts not angels that “‘ he succours,” tt ts ‘‘the offspring of Abra- 
ham”). ™ He had to resemble his brothers in every respect, in order to prove 
a merciful and faithful high priest in things divine, to expiate the sins of the 


1 aluaros kal capkxos (Eph 61°) is altered into the more conventional capxés 
kai aluaros by, ée.g., K L f vg syr pesh eth boh Theodoret, Aug. Jerome. 

2 avTay, ze. aluaros kal capkds, not wayudrwy, which is wrongly added 
by D* d syr?*! Eus. Jerome, Theodoret. 


Th'20.) THE PURPOSE OF GOD 29 


People. * It ts as he suffered by his temptations that he is able to help the 
tempted. 


It is remarkable (cp. Introd. p. xvi) that the writer does not 
connect the sufferings of Jesus with OT prophecy, either gener- 
ally (as, ¢.g., Lk 24° ovxi ratra édei! rabety Tov Xpiordv xrX.), OF 
with a specific reference to Is 53. He explains them on the 
ground of moral congruity. Here they are viewed from God’s 
standpoint, as in 12? from that of Jesus himself. God’s purpose 
of grace made it befitting and indeed inevitable that Jesus 
should suffer and die in fulfilling his function as a Saviour 
(v.10); then (vv.1!£) it is shown how he made common cause 
with those whom he was to rescue. 

“Empetev ydp «tA. (v.1°), IIpérewv or mpérov, in the sense of 
“seemly,” is not applied to God in the LXX, but is not un- 
common in later Greek, e.g. Lucian’s Prometheus, 8 (ovre Oeois 
mperov ovte GA\Aws BaotAuxov), and the de Mundo, 3974, 398a (6 Kai 
mpérov é€oTt Kal Oe@ pddtota dpyudlov—of a theory about the 
universe, however). The writer was familiar with it in Philo, 
who has several things to say about what it behoved God to do,? 
though never this thing; Philo has the phrase, not the idea. 
According to Aristotle (Vic. Ethics, iv. 2. 2, 1o mpérov 8) mpos 
airdv, kal év ® kal mepi 6), what is “ befitting” relates to the 
person himself, to the particular occasion, and to the object. 
Here, we might say, the idea is that it would not have done for 
God to save men by a method which stopped short of suffering 
and actual death. ‘‘ Quand il est question des actes de Dieu, 
ce qui est convenadble est toujours mécessatre au point de vue 
métaphysique” (Reuss). In the description of God (for aéré 
cannot be applied to Jesus in any natural sense) 8v év ta mdvta 
kat 8: o8 Ta mdvta, the writer differs sharply from Philo, ‘The 
Alexandrian Jew objects to Eve (Gn 4!) and Joseph (Gn 40!8) 
using the phrase da rod Geod (Cherudim, 35), on the ground that 
it makes God merely instrumental ; whereas, 6 @eds airtov, ovK 
dpyavov. On the contrary, we call God the creative cause 
(airvov) of the universe, dpyavov dé Adyov Ged SV ot KatecKkevdc On. 
He then quotes Ex 141% to prove, by the use of zapa, that 
od 1a 3 Tod Geod GAAG Tap’ airod ws airiov TO cwlecPa. But our 
author has no such scruples about dua, any more than Aeschylus 
had (Agamemnon, 1486, dat Atos ravaitiov mavepyéra). Like 
Paul (Ro 11°) he can say &’ ob ra wdévra of God, adding, for 
the sake of paronomasia, 6 ov to cover what Paul meant by 
ef adrov Kai ets airov. Or rather, starting with 6c ov ra wdvra he 


1 The &erdev of v.17 is not the same as this det. 

2 Thus: mpérer T@ Oem purevew Kal olkodouety ev Wuyn Tas dperds (Leg. 
alleg. i. 15) 

3 When he does use dtd (de officio, 24) it is 6¢ avrod udvov, of creation, 


30 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS [ II. 10. 


prefers another dua with a genitive, for the sake of assonance, 
to the more usual equivalent é€ ot or id’ ot. To preserve the 
assonance, Zimmer proposes to render: ‘um dessentwillen das 
All, und durch dessen Willen das All.” 


The ultimate origin of the phrase probably lies in the mystery-cults ; 
Aristides (His rov Zdparw, 51: ed, Dindorf, i. ‘P. 87), in an invocation of 
Serapis, writes to this effect, rdvra yap mavraxod dia cod re Kal did ce Hiv 
ylyverat. But Greek thought i in Stoicism had long ago played upon the use 
of 6d in this connexion. Possibly dia with the accusative was the primitive 
and regular expression, as Norden contends.! We call Zeus ‘‘ Zva cal Ala” 
ws dy ef Néyouwev Sv dv SSuev, says the author of de Mundo (401a), like the 
older Stoics (see Arnim’s Stotcorum veterum Fragmenta, il. pp. 305, 312), 
and did with the accusative might have the same causal sense here,? z.¢. 
“through,” in which case the two phrases 6? év and 6 of would practically 
be a poetical reduplication of the same idea, or at least=‘‘ by whom and 
through whom.” But the dominant, though not exclusive, idea of 6: év here 
is final, ‘‘ for whom” ; the end of the universe, of all history and creation, 
lies with Him by whom it came into being and exists; He who podeemica is 
He who has all creation at His command and under His control. 


The point in adding 8 ov . . . ra rdvra to atrad is that the 
sufferings and death of Jesus are not accidental; they form part 
of the eternal world-purpose of God. Philo had explained that 
Moses was called up to Mount Sinai on the seventh day, because 
God wished to make the choice of Israel parallel to the creation 
of the world (Quaest. in Exod. 2416 BovAdpevos éridetEar Ste adros 
Kal TOV KOcpov ednutovpynoe Kal Td yévos etAero, “H dé dvaxAnots 
Tov Tpopyrov Sevrepa yéveris Eott THS Tporépas apeivwv). But our 
author goes deeper; redemption, he reiterates (for this had 
been hinted at in 1!*), is not outside the order of creation. The 
distinction between the redeeming grace of God and the created 
universe was drawn afterwards by gnosticism. There is no 
conscious repudiation of such a view here, only a definite asser- 
tion that behind the redeeming purpose lay the full force of God 
the creator, that God’s providence included the mysterious 
sufferings of Jesus His Son, and that these were in line with 
His will. 

In woddods utods the zodAoé is in antithesis to the one and 
only a&pxnyds, as in Ro 8%, Mk 1474. For the first time the 
writer calls Christians God’s sons. His confidence towards the 
Father is in sharp contrast to Philo’s touch of hesitation in De 
Confus. Ling. 28 (xav pndérw pévrot tvyxavyn tis détdypews Sv vids 
Geod mpocayopeverOar . . . Kal yap ei pytw txavol Oeod aides 
vopilerOar yeyovapev). *Ayaydvta is devoid of any reference to 

1 Agnostos Theos, 347 f. (‘‘ Das ist die applikation der logisch- gramma- 
tischen Theorie tiber den Kasus, der in dltester Terminologie, 4 xar’ airlay 
mr@o.s, heisst, auf die Physik: die Welt ist das Objekt der durch die héchste 
alrla ausgeiibten Tatigkeit ”). 


2 As in Apoc. 4!! and Zpzst. Artsteas, 16: 6: dv {woroodvrar Ta wdvTa 
cal ylverat (quoting Zijva cal Ala), 


II. 10. | THE SUFFERINGS OF JESUS 31 


past time. ‘The aorist participle is used adverbially, as often, to 
denote “‘an action evidently in a general way coincident in time 
with the action of the verb, yet not identical with it. The 
choice of the aorist participle rather than the present in such 
cases is due to the fact that the action is thought of, not as in 
progress, but as a simple event or fact” (Burton, JZoods and 
Tenses, 149). It is accusative instead of dative, agreeing with 
an implied airov instead of airé, by a common Greek assimila- 
Hons (Copier. “ACW 1? irs aett! 95%7))) The accusativesiand 
infinitive construction prompted dyaydvra instead of dyayovru. 
Had dyayovra been intended to qualify dpynydv, roAXovs would 
have been preceded by tov. The thought is: thus do men 
attain the dda which had been their destiny (v."), but only 
through a Jesus who had won it for them by suffering. 


The mistaken idea that dyayévra must refer to some action previous to 
reder@oat, which gave rise to the Latin rendering ‘‘ qui adduxerat” (vg) or 
**multis filiis adductis” (vt), is responsible for the ingenious suggestion of 
Zimmer that 66a denotes an intermediate state of bliss, where the dixaco: of 
the older age await the full inheritance of the messianic bliss. It is possible 
(see below on 11%? 12”) to reconstruct such an idea in the mind of the writer, 
but not to introduce it here. 


The general idea in dépxnydv is that of originator or personal 
source; Touréot, Tov altiov THs Gwrynpias (Chrysostom). It is 
doubtful how far the writer was determined, in choosing the 
term, by its varied associations, but the context, like that of 12, 
suggests that the “pioneer” meaning was present to his mind; 
Jesus was d&pxnyss tis gwryptas adtéy in the sense that he led the 
way, broke open the road for those who followed him. This 
meaning, common in the LXX, recurs in Ac 5%! (dpynyov kai 
cwrnpa), and suits dyaydovra better than the alternative sense of 
the head or progenitor—as of a Greek clan or colony. In this 
sense dpxnyos is applied to heroes, and is even a divine title of 
Apollo as the head of the Seleucidae (OGJS. 21218, 219%), as 
well as a term for the founder (=conditor) or head of a philo- 
sophical school (Athenaeus, xill. 563 E, tov dpynyov tuav tis 
codias Zyvwva). But the other rendering is more relevant. 
Compare the confession (in the Acts of Maximilianus) of the 
soldier who was put to death in 295 a.p. (Ruinart, Acta Martyrum, 
pp. 340f.): “huic omnes Christiani servimus, hunc sequimur 
vitae principem, salutis auctorem.” The sufferings of Jesus as 
apxnyos owtyptas had, of course, a specific value in the eyes of 
the writer. He did not die simply in order to show mortals how 
to die; he experienced death trép ravros, and by this unique 
suffering made it possible for ‘many sons” of God to enter the 
bliss which he had first won for them. Hence, to “perfect” 
(reAccGoar) the dpynyss owrtynpias is to make him adequate, 


32 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS [II. 10, 11 


completely effective. What this involved for him we are not yet 
told; later on (5° 728) the writer touches the relation between 
the perfect ability of Christ and his ethical development through 
suffering (see below, v.!*), but meantime he uses this. general 
term. God had to “perfect” Jesus by means of suffering, that 
he might be equal to his task as dpxnyéds or dpxtepeds (v.17); the 
addition of airév to owrnpias implies (see 77°) that he himself 
had not to be saved from sin as they had. The underlying idea 
of the whole sentence is that by thus “ perfecting” Jesus through 
suffering, God carries out his purpose of bringing ‘‘ many sons” 
to bliss. 

The verb had already acquired a tragic significance in connexion with 
martyrdom ; in 4 Mac 7 (dv misrh Pavarov oppayis érehelwoev) it is used of 
Eleazar’s heroic death, and this reappeared in the Christian vocabulary, as, 
€. 845 in the title of the Passzo S. Perpetuae (uapriptov THs aylas Ileprerovas kal 
Tav civ airy TedewOévtwy év ’Adpixn). But, although Philo had popu- 
larized the idea of reXevrévy=redetoOa, this is not present to our writer’s 
mind ; he is thinking of God’s purpose to realize a complete experience of 


forgiveness and fellowship (owrnpia) through the Son, and this includes and 
involves (as we shall see) a process of moral development for the Son. 


The writer now (v.1!) works out the idea suggested by moAXods 
utous. Since Jesus and Christians have the same spiritual origin, 
since they too in their own way are “sons” of God, he is proud 
to call them brothers and to share their lot (vy. 118) Bhie 
leader and his company are a unit, members of the one family of 
God. It is implied, though the writer does not explain the 
matter further, that Christ’s common tie with mankind goes back 
to the pre-incarnate period; there was a close bond between 
them, even before he was born into the world; indeed the in- 
carnation was the consequence of this solidarity or vital tie (éé 
évés, cp. Pindar, Wem. vi. 1, €v dvdpav, &v OeGv yévos). “O dyidLov 
and ot dyrafduevor are participles used as substantives, devoid of 
reference to time. Here, as at 13/2, Jesus is assigned the divine 
prerogative of dyuafew (cp. Ezk 20!” ey@ xvpios 6 dyialwy adrtors, 
2 Mac 1%, etc.), ze. of making God’s People His very own, by 
bringing them into vital relationship with Himself. It is another 
sacerdotal metaphor ; the thought of 1° (xadapiopov TOV dwapTeav 
roinodpevos) is touched again, but the full meaning of dyaewv is 
not developed till 9!°£, where we see that to be “sanctified” is 
to be brought into the presence of God through the self- saptlifte 
of Christ; in other words, dyidfeoGar= rpooepyecOar or éyyilewv 
7® Ged, as in Nu 16° where the ayo. are those whom God 
TpoonyayeTo Tpos éavTov. 

According to (Akiba?) Mechilta, 714 (on Ex 20"), God said to the angels 
at Sinai, ‘‘Gso down and help your brothers” (O2°"4x"N¥ 3yrDp) 79); yet it 


was not merely the angels, but God himself, who helped them (the proof-text 
being Ca 2° !), 


II. 11-18. | JESUS AND MEN an 


Av iv aitiav—a phrase only used elsewhere in the NT by the 
author of the Pastoral epistles—odx ématoydvetat kTA. *Emaoyu- 
veoOat implies that he was of higher rank, being somehow vids Oeod 
as they were not. The verb only occurs three times in LXX, twice 
of human shame (Ps 119°, Is 179), and once perhaps of God 
(=Nw3) in Job 341%. In Zest. Jos. 2° it is used passively (od yap 
ws avOpwros éraroyxvverat 6 Oeds). In the gospels, besides Mk 3%4f 
and Mt 25%°, there are slight traditions of the risen Jesus calling 
the disciples his &3edpot (Mt 2819, Jn 2017); but the writer either 
did not know of them or preferred, as usual, to lead biblical 
proofs. He quotes three passages (vv.!% 15), the first from the 
22nd psalm (v.?%) taken as a messianic cry, the only change 
made in the LXX text being the alteration of diuyynoopat into 
amayyeA® (a synonym, see Ps 5518). The Son associates himself 
with his adeAdot in the praise of God offered by their community 
(a thought which is echoed in 128 13}5), 

According to Justin Martyr (Dza/. 106), Ps 227% 23 foretells how the risen 
Jesus stood év pécw Trav ddehpadv atrod, Trav drooré\wy . . . Kal wer abrov 
dudywr turnoe tov Pedy, ws Kal ev Trois drouynuovevmacw Tv dmrocrd\wy 
dndodrat yeyernuévov, and in the Acta Joannzs (11) Jesus, before going out to 
Gethsemane, says, Let us sing a hymn to the Father (év péow 5é atros yevd- 
fevos). The couplet is quoted here for the sake of the first line; the second 
fills it out. Our author only uses ékxAynota (12?) of the heavenly host, never 
in its ordinary sense of the ‘‘ church.” 

The second quotation (v.18) is from Is 817 écopat memoubds 
(a periphrastic future) ém’ aéré, but the writer prefixes éyd to 
éoouo. for emphasis. The insertion of épet by the LXX at the 
beginning of Is 8!” helped to suggest that the words were not 
spoken by the prophet himself. The fact that Jesus required to 
put faith in God proves that he was a human being like ourselves 
(see 127). 

In Philo trustful hope towards God is the essential mark of humanity ; 
e.g. guod det. pot. 38 (on Gn 46), rod dé kara Mwvofy avOpwrov didbeots ux fs 
eri Tov bvTws dvTa Gedy EXmifovons. 

The third quotation (v.!%») is from the words which immedi- 
ately follow in Is 8!8, where the LXX breaks the Hebrew 
sentence into two, the first of which is quoted for his own 
purposes by the writer. The maiSia are God’s children, the 
fellow viot of Christ. It is too subtle to treat, with Zimmer, the 
three quotations as (a) a resolve to proclaim God, as a man to 
men; (4) a resolve to trust God amid the sufferings incurred in 
his mission, and (c) an anticipation of the reward of that mission. 
On the other hand, to omit the second kai wadw as a scribal 
gloss (Bentley) would certainly improve the sense and avoid the 
necessity of splitting up an Isaianic quotation into two, the first 
of which is not strictly apposite. But «at maw is similarly?! 

1 Tt is a literary device of Philo in making quotations (cp. guzs rer. div. 1) 


5 


34 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS [II. 13, 14. 


used in 10°° ; it is more easy to understand why such words should 
be omitted than inserted; and the deliberate addition of éy« in 
the first points to an intentional use of the sentence as indirectly 
a confession of fellow-feeling with men on the part of the Son. 

The same words of the 22nd psalm are played upon by the Od. Sol 314: 
‘Cand he (z.e. messiah or Truth) lifted up his voice to the most High, and 
offered to Him the sons that were with him (or, in his hands).” 

In v.}4 xexouwdvykev (here alone in the NT) takes the classical 
genitive, as in the LXX. An apt classical parallel occurs in the 
military writer Polyaenus (S¢ra¢eg. ili. 11. 1), where Chabrias tells 
his troops to think of their foes merely as avOpwros aipa Kal 
gapka €xovol, Kal THS aiTHs Pioews uly Kexowwvykdow. The 
following phrase mapamAynotws (= “similarly,” ze. almost “‘ equally ” 
or “also,” as, eg., in Maxim. Tyr. vii. 2, kat éoriv kai 6 apywv 
TOAEWS Mépos, Kal ol apyouevor TaparAnciws) peTésxev . . . va KTA, 
answers to the thought of #Aarrwpyevov . . . dua 7d waOypa KrA. 
above. ‘The verb is simply a synonym for kowvwvetvy; in the 
papyri and the inscriptions peréxew is rather more common, but 
there is no distinction of meaning -between the two. 

This idea (tva xrA.) of crushing the devil as the wielder of 
death is not worked out by the writer. He alludes to it in passing 
as a belief current in his circle, and it must have had some 
context in his mind; but what this scheme of thought was, we 
can only guess. Evidently the devil was regarded as having a 
hold upon men somehow, a claim and control which meant 
death for them. One clue to the meaning is to be found in the 
religious ideas popularized by the Wisdom of Solomon, in which 
it is pretty clear that man was regarded as originally immortal 
(118-14), that death did not form part of God’s scheme at the 
beginning, and that the devil was responsible for the introduction 
of death into the world (27% 74); those who side with the devil 
encounter death (epaovow b€ adrov of THs éxeivov pepidos ovres). 
which they bring upon themselves as a result of their sins 
Robertson Smith (Zxfosttor*, iii. pp. 76 f.) suggests another ex- 
planation, viz., that Jesus removes the fear of death by acting as 
our Highpriest, since (cp. Nu 18°) the OT priests were respon- 
sible for averting death from the people, ‘‘the fear of death ’ 
being ‘‘specially connected with the approach of an impure 
worshipper before God.” This certainly paves the way for v.47, 
but it does not explain the allusion to the devil, for the illustra- 
tion of Zech 35! is too remote. 

Corroborations of this idea are to be found in more quartersthan one. (a) 
There is the rabbinic notion that the angel of death has the power of inflicting 
death, according to Pes. Kahana, 32. 1894; Mechilta, 72@ on Ex 20” (where 
Ps 82° is applied to Israel at Sinai, since obedience to the Torah would have 


exempted them from the power of the angel of death), the angel of death 
being identified with the devil. (4) There is also the apocalyptic hope that 


II, 14, 15.] THE FEAR OF DEATH 35 


messiah at the end would crush the power of the devil, a hope expressed 
in the second-century conclusion (Freer-Codex) to Mark, where the risen 
Christ declares that ‘‘ the limit (or term, 6 Spos) of years for Satan’s power has 
now expired.” (c) Possibly the author assumed and expanded Paul’s view of 
death as the divine punishment for sin executed by the devil, and of Christ’s 
death as a satisfaction which, by semoving this curse of the law, did away 
with the devil’s hold on sinful mortals. Theodoret’s explanation (Dz7a/. iii.) is 
that the sinlessness of Christ’s human nature freed human nature from sin, 
which the devil had employed to enslave men: éme:d} yap Tiwwpla TOV dpap- 
THKkdTwv 0 Odvaros Fr, TO 6é cHua TH Kupiaxdv ovk €xov apmaprias kndrAda 6 rapa 
Tov Geiov vduov 6 Odvaros ddlkws eEjpracev, dvéornoe uev mpOTov Td Tapavduws 
katacxebév’ &reira 5é kal rots évdixws kaberpyuévors Uréoxero Thy amTaddayHy. 


The force of the paradox in 814 toG @avdrou (to which the 
Armenian version needlessly adds airov) is explained by 
Chrysostom: 6 ob éxparnoev 6 diaBoAos, dia rovTov HrTyOy. As 
the essence of owrypia is life, its negative aspect naturally 
involves emancipation from death. “Eye 76 kpdros tod Pavarov 
means to wield the power of death, z.e. to have control of death. 
éxetv TO Kparos with the genitive in Greek denoting lordship in 
a certain sphere, e.g. Eurip. e/ena, 68 (ris ravd’ épupvav dwparwv 
éxet Kpadros;). “Amadddgn goes with dovdrcias (as in Joseph. Anz. 
13. 13 (363), THs td Tols éxPpois adrods dovAcias . . . azad- 
Aarrew, etc.), which is thrown to the end of the sentence for 
emphasis, after doo. . . . 7oav which qualifies rovrous. “Evoxou 
is a passive adjective, equivalent to éveyouevor, “bound by” (as 
in Demosthenes, 1229), and goes with @0fw @avarov, which is 
not a causal dative. “Ooo in Hellenistic Greek is no more than 
the ordinary relative of. Awd wavtds tod CAv, not simply in old 
age, as Musonius (ed. Hense, xvii.) thinks: kal 16 ye a@Audrarov 
mov tov Biov Tots yépovow atrd éotiv, 6 Tod Oavarov Pdfos. 
Aristeas (130, 141, 168) uses dc’ oAov rod hy, but da ravrds Tod 
énv is an unparalleled (in NT Greek) instance of an attribute in 
the same case being added to the infinitive with a preposition. 
There is a classical parallel in the Platonic 61a wavrds rod elvat 
(Parmenides, 152E); but ro mv had already come to be 
equivalent to 6 Bios. 

The enslaving power of fear in general is described by 
Xenophon in the Cyropaedia, ili. 1. 23f.: ote. ody te paddov 
Katadovrcvabar avOpwmrovs tov iaxupod pdBov; . . . ovTw TavTwv 
tov dewav 6 hoBos padiora KatarAynTre: Tas Wuxds. Here it is the 
fear of death, or rather of what comes after death, which is 
described. The Greek protest against the fear of death (cp. 
Epict. ili. 36. 28), as unworthy of the wise and good, is echoed 
by Philo (guod omnis probus liber, 3, émawvetrat mapa tow 6 
TpipeTpov exetvo Tomnoas’ ‘ris eat dovAos, TOU Gavety Appovtis dy ;” 
as pada cvviddav 7d axdAovfov. “YreAaBe yap, dre ovdey ovTw 
Sovrodabar méduxe Sidvovav, @s TO ert Gavdtw déos, Evexa TOD Tpds 
ro fyv ivépov). But the fear persisted, as we see from writers 


36 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS [II. 15, 16. 


like Seneca (“‘ optanda mors est sine metu mortis mori,” Z7voades, 
869) and Cicero; the latter deals with the fear of death in De 
Finibus, v. 11, aS an almost universal emotion (“‘fere sic affici- 
untur omnes”), Lucretius as a rationalist had denounced it 
magnificently in the De Rerum Natura, which “is from end to 
end a passionate argument against the fear of death and the 
superstition of which it was the basis. The fear which he 
combated was not the fear of annihilation, but one with which 
the writer of this Epistle could sympathize, the fear of what 
might come after death; ‘aeternas quoniam poenas in morte 
timendum est’ (i. 111)” (Wickham). . The fear of death as death 
(cp. Harnack’s History of Dogma, ili. 180) has been felt. even 
by strong Christians like Dr. Johnson. But our author has 
more in view. Seneca’s epistles, for example, are thickly strewn 
with counsels against the fear of death; he remonstrates with 
Lucilius on the absurdity of it, discusses the legitimacy of 
suicide, if things come to the worst, points out that children and 
lunatics have no such fear (Z/. xxxvi. 12), and anticipates most 
of the modern arguments against this terror. Nevertheless, he 
admits that it controls human life to a remarkable extent, even 
though it is the thought of death, not death itself, that we dread 
(Zp. xxx 17); he confesses that if you take anyone, young, 
middle-aged, or elderly, ‘‘you will find them equally afraid of 
death” (xxii. 14). And his deepest consolation is that death 
cannot be a very serious evil, because it is the last evil of all 
(“quod extremum est,” £/. iv. 3). Now the author of IIpds 
‘EBpaiovs sees more beyond death than Seneca. ‘‘ After death, 
the judgment.” The terror which he notes in men is inspired by 
the fact that death is not the final crisis (9?’). “ Ultra (ze. post 
mortem) neque curae neque gaudio locum esse,” said Sallust. 
It was because a primitive Christian did see something “ ultra 
mortem,” that he was in fear, till his hope reassured him (9*8). 

It is noteworthy that here (vv.!* 15) and elsewhere our author, not un- 
like the other 6:dacxados who wrote the epistle of James, ignores entirely the 


idea of the devil as the source of temptation ; he does not even imply the 
conception of the devil, as 1 Peter does, as the instigator of persecution. 


In one of his terse parentheses the writer now (v.16) adds, 
od yap Symou dyyéAwv émAapBdverar. Arzov is the classical term 
for ‘‘it need hardly be said” or ‘‘of course,” and émAapBaver bar 
means ‘‘to succour” (Sir 41! 4 codia viots éavty aviwoerv, Kat 
érikapBaverar tov Cyrovvrwy avryv). If it meant “seize” or 
“orip,” Odvaros (z.e. either death, or the angel of death, cp. v.14) 
might be taken as the nominative, the verse being still a 
parenthesis. This idea, favoured by some moderns, seems to 
lie behind the Syriac version (cp. A. Bonus, Zefository Times, 
xxxiii. pp. 234-236); but érAauBdveoOar here corresponds to 


II, 16, 17.) THE AID OF JESUS 57 


BonPijoa in v.18, and is used in the same good sense as in the 
other quotation in 8%. The words édA\a onéppatos “ABpadp 
émudapBdvera, may be a reminiscence of Is 41% where God 
reassures Israel: oméppa “ABpadu... ov avteAaBounv. The 
archaic phrase was perhaps chosen, instead of a term like 
avOpH7wv,! on account of Abraham’s position as the father of the 
faithful (see 118). Paul had already claimed it as a title for 
all Christians, irrespective of their birth: od« é “Iovdatos ovde 
"EAAnv . . . ei O€ tpets Xpiorod, dpa tov “ABpaau omréppa éoreé 
(Gal 378 2), and our author likes these archaic, biblical peri- 
phrases. He repeats émiAapPBdverar after “ABpadu to make a 
rhetorical antistrophe (see Introd. p. lvii). 

It is a warning against the habit of taking the Greek fathers as absolute 
authorities for the Greek of IIpds ‘ES8patous, that they never suspected the real 
sense of értAauBdverat here. To them it meant ‘‘appropriates” (the nature 
of). When Castellio (Chatillon), the sixteenth century scholar, first pointed 
out the true meaning, Beza pleasantly called his opinion a piece of cursed 
impudence (‘‘execranda Castellionis audacia qui émi:AauBdverac convertit 
‘opitulatur,’ non modo falsa sed etiam inepta interpretatione”). The mere 
fact that the Greek fathers and the versions missed the point of the word is 
a consideration which bears, ¢.g., upon the interpretation of a word like 
vmécracis in 34 and 11}, 


The thought of vv.1+ © is now resumed in v.!"; 60ev (a 
particle never used by Paul) GewWev (answering to épezer) 
kata mdévra (emphatic by position) rots dseApots dpowwOAvar— 
resembling them in reality, as one brother resembles another 
(so Zest. NMaphtali 18 opows pov jv xara ravta “Iwond). In 
what follows, éXejpov? is put first for emphasis (as the writer is 
about to speak of this first), and goes like motés with dpxiepeds. 
“‘Quae verba sic interpretor: ut misericors esset, ideoque 
fidelis,” Calvin argues. But this sequence of thought is not 
natural; loyalty to God’s purpose no doubt involved compassion 
for men, but Christ was aioros as he endured stedfastly the 
temptations incurred in his reAciwos as dpynyds. He suffered, 
but he never swerved in his vocation. Nor can mords here 
mean “reliable” (Seeberg, Der Tod Christi, 17), t.e. reliable be- 
cause merciful; the idea of his sympathy as an encouragement 
to faith is otherwise put (cp. 4!4f 121"). The idea of tederdoar 
in v.19 is being explicitly stated ; the sufferings of Christ on earth 
had a reflex influence upon himself as Saviour, fitting him for 
the proper discharge of his vocation. But the vocation is 
described from a new angle of vision; instead of dpxnyos or 
6 ayialwv, Jesus is suddenly (see Introd. p. xxv) called dpytepevs, 


1 Cosmas Indicopleustes correctly interpreted the phrase: rovréo7e 
gwuaros Kal Pux7s AoyiK7js (372 B). 

2 The seer in Enoch 4o!"!" has a vision of the four angels who intercede 
for Israel before God ; the first is ‘‘ Michael, the merciful and longsuffering.” 


38 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS penal? 


evidently a term familiar to the readers (dpxvepéa rHs dpodoyias 
npav, 32). The prestige of the highpriest in the later Judaism 
is plain in rabbinic (e.g. Berachoth, Joma) tradition and also in 
apocalyptic. The Maccabean highpriests assumed the title of 
iepevs TOU Peod Tod tWiorov (Ass. Mosis, 61; Jubilees, 321), and the 
ritual of the day of atonement, when he officiated on behalf of 
the people, was invested with a special halo. This is the point 
of the allusion here, to the dpxtepevs expiating the sins of the 
people. Philo had already used the metaphor to exalt the 
functions of his Logos as a mediator: 6 8 atrés ixérys pev éote 
tov Ovntov Kypatvovtos del mpos TO apGaprov, mpecPevT7s dé Tod 
WYEMOVOS mpos TO UrHKoov (Guts rerum div. heres, 42). But, while 
the term ixérys does imply some idea of intercession, this is 
not prominent in Philo’s cosmological and metaphysical scheme, 
as it is in our epistle, which carefully avoids the Philonic 
idea that men can propitiate God (fovAerat yap airov 6 vopos 
petLovos peoipacbar picews 7) Kat avUpwror, eyyutépw TporovTa 
THs Oeias, peOdprov, ei det TaANOes A€yerv, apdoty, iva dia pécov 
Twos avOpwrot pev itaoKdvrar Gedy, Geos dé Tas xdpitas avOpdrroas 
brodiakovw Tivi xpwpevos dpéyn Kat xopynyyn, De Spec. Leg. i. 12). 
Again, Philo explains (de sacerdot. 12) that the highpriest was 
forbidden to mourn, when a relative died, iva... xpetttwy 
oiktov yevouevos, GAvros eis det diate}. This freedom from the 
ordinary affections of humanity was part of his nearer approxi- 
mation to the life of God (éyyvtépw mpooidvra ris Oetas 
[gvcews]). But our author looks at the function of Christ as 
apxvepevs differently ; the first word to be used about him in this 
connexion is éAejuwy, and, before passing on to develop the idea 
of wuords, the writer adds (v./8) another word upon the practical 
sympathy of Christ. In resembling his ddeAdol xara wavra 
Christ wérovOev weipacbeis. His death had achieved for them 
an emancipation from the dread of death (v.!*); by entering 
into glory he had expiated the sins of God’s People, thereby 
securing for them a free and intimate access to God. But the 
process by means of which he had thus triumphed was also of 
value to men; it gave him the experience which enabled him by 
sympathy to enter into the position of those who are tempted 
as he was, and to furnish them with effective help. The con- 
nexion between v.!§ (with its ydp) and v.!7 does not rest upon 
the idea of Christ as éAenpwv kal motos apxepevs, as though the 
effective help received from Christ were a constant proof that he 
expiates sins, 7.e¢. maintains us in the favour and fellowship of 
God (Seeberg). It rests on the special idea suggested by 
éXenuwv. ‘His compassion is not mere pity for men racked 
. . . by pain in itself, however arising; it is compassion for 
men tempted by sufferings towards sin or unbelief” (A. B. 


II. I7,18.] THE TEMPTATIONS OF JESUS 39 


Davidson). What the writer has specially in mind is the agony 
in Gethsemane (cp. 57) as the culminating experience of sorrow 
caused by the temptation to avoid the fear of death or the cross. 

The adverbial accusative 1a mpds tov Oedv here, as in 5}, is a 
fairly common LXX phrase (e.g. Ex 41° (of Moses), od d€ aire 
éon Ta pds TOV Oedv). “INdokecPar Tas dpaptias is also a LXX 
phrase, an expression for pardon or expiation, as in Ps 654 (ras 
aceBelas nuav ov ikdoy), which never occurs again in the NT. 
When the verb (middle voice) is used of God’s dealings with 
men, it generally takes the person of the sinner as its object 
in the dative (as Lk 18!%, the only other NT instance of 
iAdoxeoOar) or else sins in the dative (rats duapriats is actually 
read here by A 5. 33. 623. 913, Athan. Chrys. Bentley, etc.). 
This removal of sins as an obstacle to fellowship with God 
comes under the function of 6 dy.afwy. The thought reappears 
in 7% and in 1 Jn 2? (kai airos iAaopos éotw). 


6 dads (708 God) is the writer’s favourite biblical expression for the church, 
from the beginning to the end ; he never distinguishes Jews and Gentiles. 


The introduction of the wepacpot of Jesus (v.'8) is as 
abrupt as the introduction of the dpyvepevs idea, but is thrown 
out by way of anticipation. *Ev @ ydp = év tovrw év & (causal) or 
ort, explaining not the sphere, but the reason of his “help,” 
mémovev attds metpacbeis—the participle defining the rdécyev (a 
term never applied to Jesus by Paul): he suffered by his tempta- 
tions, the temptations specially in view being temptations to 
avoid the suffering that led to the cross. This is the situation 
of the readers. ‘They are in danger of slipping into apostasy, of 
giving up their faith on account of the hardships which it in- 
volved. Ot zetpafdpnevor are people tempted to flinch and falter 
under the pressure of suffering. Life is hard for them, and faith 
as hard if not harder. Courage, the writer cries, Jesus under- 
stands; he has been through it all, he knows how hard it is to 
bear suffering without being deflected from the will of God. 
Grammatically, the words might also read: ‘For he himself, 
having been tempted by what he suffered, is able to help those 
who are tempted.” The sense is really not very different, for 
the particular temptations in view are those which arise out 
of the painful experience of having God’s will cross the natural 
inclination to avoid pain. But the zepacpot of Jesus were 
not simply due to what he suffered. He was strongly tempted 
by experiences which were not painful at all—e.g. by the re- 
monstrance of Simon Peter at Caesarea Philippi. As Ritschl 
puts it, ‘‘Christ was exposed to temptation simply because a 
temptation is always bound up with an inclination which is at 
the outset morally legitimate or permissible. It was the impulse, 


40 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS _ [II. 18-III. 1. 


in itself lawful, of self-preservation which led to Christ’s desire to 
be spared the suffering of death. And this gave rise to a tempta- 
tion to sin, because the wish collided with his duty. in his 
vocation. Christ, however, did not consent to this temptation. 
He renounced his self-preservation, because he assented to the 
Divine disposal of the end of his life as a consequence of his 
vocation” (Rechtfertigung u. Versdhnung, ill. 507; Eng. tr. p. 573). 
On the suffering that such temptation involved, see below on 5°. 
Bonbety and tddoxeoOat tats dyaptiats occur side by side in 
the prayer of Ps 799 (LXX). Are they synonymous here? Is 
the meaning of 70 iAdoxeoOar Tas duaptias Tod Aaovd that Christ 
constantly enables us to overcome the temptations that would 
keep us at a distance from God or hinder us from being at peace 
with God? (so, e.g., Kurtz and M‘Leod Campbell, Zhe Mature of 
the Atonement, pp. 172-174). The meaning is deeper. The 
help conveyed by the sympathy of Jesus reaches back to a 
sacrificial relationship, upon which everything turns. Hence the 
ideas of éXehypwv and mords are now developed, the latter in 3°, 
the former in 4146, 36418 being a practical. application of what 
is urged in 3, But the writer does not work out. the thought 
of Christ as morés in connexion with his function as apxvepevs, 
even though he mentions the latter term at the outset of his 
appeal, in which the stress falls on the expiatory work of Christ. 
1 Holy brothers (dyto = of aryrafduevor, 2"), you who participate in a 
heavenly calling, look at Jesus then (60ev in the light of what has just been 
said), at the apostle and highpriest of our confession ; * he zs *‘ faithful” to 
Him who appointed him. For while ‘* Moses” also was ‘‘ faithful in every 
department of God's house,” * Jesus ( ovros, as in 10!) has been adjudged greater 
glory (dds) than (rapa, as 14) Moses, inasmuch as the founder of a house 
enjoys greater honour (TyLny, a literary synonym for deny) than the house 
itself. 4(Every house ts founded by some one, but God ts the Sounder of all.) 
5 Besides, while “* Moses” was ‘‘ fatth{ul in every department of God’s house” 


as an attendant—by way of witness to the coming revelation—® Christ ts 
faithful as a son over God’s house. 


In v.? 6A@ (om. p!® B sah boh Cyr. Amb.) may be a gloss from v.5, In 
v.* the emphasis on mAelovos is better maintained by odros ddEys (8 A B CDP 
uf Chrys.) than by 66&ns ofros (p'#? K L M 6. 33. 104. 326. 1175. 1288 vg) or 
by the omission of odros altogether (467 arm Basil). In v.4 rdvra has been 
harmonized artificially with 1° 2!° by the addition of rd (C° L P © 104. 326. 
1175. 1128 Athan.). 


For the first time the writer addresses his readers, and as 
AdeApot Gyror (only here in NT, for dyfous in 1 Th 5?" is a later 
insertion), KAyoews émroupaviou pétoxot (64 etc., cp. Ps 119°8 péroyxos 
eyo clue mavTwv TOV poBoupevor oe, Ep. Arist. 207; de Mundo, 
4016). In Ph 3!* the dvw xAjows is the prize conferred at the 
end upon Christian faith and faithfulness. Here there may be a 
side allusion to 2! (ddeAdovs adrots xadeiv). In katavojoare (a 
verb used in this general sense by Z/. Aristeas, 3, mpos 26 


III. 1.] JESUS THE APOSTLE 4! 


mepiepyws Ta Geta Katavoeiv) ktA., the writer summons his readers 
to consider Jesus as miocrds; but, instead of explaining why or 
how Jesus was loyal to God, he uses this quality to bring out 
two respects (the first in vv.**4, the second in vv.>-6) in which 
Jesus outshone Moses, the divinely-commissioned leader and 
lawgiver of the People in far-off days, although there is no tone 
of disparagement in the comparison with Moses, as in the com- 
parison with the angels. . 

In the description of Jesus as tov &mdéotodov Kal dpxvepea Tis 
dpodoylas judy, duoAoyia is almost an equivalent for “‘our re- 
ligion,” as in 4!4 (cp. 10%8).! ‘Through the sense of a vow (LXX) 
or of a legal agreement (papyri and inscriptions), it had naturally 
passed into the Christian vocabulary as a term for the common 
and solemn confession or creed of faith. “Hyév is emphatic. 
In “our religion” it is Jesus who is dmdoToAos Kai dpyuepevs, not 
Moses. ‘This suits the context better than to make the antithesis 
one between the law and the gospel (Theophyl. od yap tis Kara 
vopov AaTpeElas apxvepevs Eortiv, GAAA THS HueTepas wicTews). Possibly 
the writer had in mind the Jewish veneration for Moses which 
found expression during the second century in a remark of rabbi 
Jose ben Chalafta upon this very phrase from Numbers (Sifre, 
§ 110): ‘God calls: Moses ‘ faithful in all His house,’ and thereby 
he ranked higher than the ministering angels themselves.” The 
use of dmdédotodos as an epithet for Jesus shows “the fresh cre- 
ative genius of the writer and the unconventional nature of his 
style” (Bruce). Over half a century later, Justin (in Afol. 11) 
called Jesus Christ rod warpos mavtwv kal deorotov Geod vids Kai 
ardatoAos av, and in Afol. 1% described him as adyyeAos Kai 
dréaTtoAos’ aitos yap admayyéA\Aae Oca det yvwoOHvat, Kal dzoc- 
TéeAXcTal, pyviowr doa ayyéAXerat (the connexion of thought here 
possibly explains the alteration of duyyjoopuar into dayyeA@ in 
He 2). Naturally Jesus was rarely called dyyedos; but it was 
all the easier for our author to call Jesus drdoroXos, as he avoids 
the term in its ecclesiastical sense (cp. 2%). For him it carries 
the usual associations of authority ; ardcrodos is Ionic for mpec- 
Bevryjs, not a mere envoy, but an ambassador or representative 
sent with powers, authorized to speak in the name of the person 
who has dispatched him. Here the allusion is to 23, where the 
parallel is with the Sinaitic legislation, just as the allusion to 
Jesus as dpxuepeds recalls the 6 dydfwv of 24+17, On the other 
hand, it is not so clear that any explicit antithesis to Moses is 
implied in dpxtepéa, for, although Philo had invested Moses with 


1 Had it not been for these other references it might have been possible to 
take 7. 6. 7. here as=‘‘ whom we confess.” The contents of the duodroyia 
are suggested in the beliefs of 6'%, which form the fixed principles and stand. 
ards of the community, the Truth (107°) to which assent was given at baptisra, 


42 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS [III. 2-4. 


highpriestly honour ( pracm. et poen. 9» TvyxXavel . . . apxiepwor'vns, 
de vita Mosis, i. 1, éyevero ‘yap mpovoia Oeov . . . apxeepevs), this 
is never prominent, and it is never worked out in ‘‘ Hebrews.” 
The reason why they are to look at Jesus is (v.?) his faithful- 

NESS TO TrowjoavTe adroy, where movely means “to appoint ” to an 
office (as I S 12° KUptos 6 moinoas TOV Mwvonv kal tov *“Aapoy, 
Mk 3} xal éroinoev Sddexa). This faithfulness puts him above 
Moses for two reasons. First (vv.2-4), because he is the founder 
of the House or Household of God, whereas Moses is part of the 
House. The text the writer has in mind is Nu 12? (ovx ovrws 
6 Oeparwv pov Mavojs’ év dAw TO oikw prov micros éotwv), and. the 
argument of v.°, where otkos, like our “house,” includes the sense 
of household or family,! turns on the assumption that Moses be- 
longed to the otxos in which he served so faithfully. How Jesus. 
“founded” God’s household, we are not told. But there was an 
otxos Geod before Moses, as is noted later in 112%, a line of 
peo Pvrepot who lived by faith; and their existence is naturally 
referred to the eternal Son. The founding of the Household is 
part and parcel of the creation of the ra mavra (17°). Kara- 
oxevacewv includes, of course (see 9”: 6), the arrangement of the ofxos 
(cp. Epict. i. 6. 7-10, where xatacxevafw 1s similarly used in the 
argument from design). The author then adds an edifying aside, 
in y.4, to explain how the ofxos was God’s (v.? airot), though 
Jesus had specially founded it. It would ease the connexion of 
thought if eds; meant (as in 18?) “divine” as applied to Christ 
(so, e.g., Cramer, M. Stuart), or if otros could be read for Oeds, 
as Blass actually proposes. But this is to rewrite the passage. 
Nor can we take airod in v.® as “‘Christ’s” ; there are not two 
Households, and as (v.4) does not mean “each” (so, 6.2. 
Reuss). Avrov in vv.25 and must mean ‘‘God’s.” He as 
creator is ultimately responsible for the House which, under him, 
Jesus founded and supervises. 

This was a commonplace of ancient thought. Justin, ¢.g., observes : 
Mevavdpw Te KOMLKD kal Tots ratra pjoace ravra Ppdfouev* pelfova yap Tov 
Snucoupyov Tov cKevafouevou dmepivato(Afol. 1°). It had been remarked by 
Philo (De Plant. 16): do yap 6 krnodpevos Td KTHA TOU KTHUaTOS dpuelywr 
kal TO memoinkos TOU yeyovdros, TocoUTW BaciNikwrepo dketvor, and in Legume 
A llegor. ili, 32 he argues that just as no one would ever suppose that a furnished 
mansion had been completed d&vev TEXY NS kal Onucoupyov, so anyone entering 
and studying the universe wotep els weylorny oixlay 7 wédty would naturally 
conclude that fv Kal éoriv 6 Totde Tod mavros Snuroupyds ¢ 6 Beds. 

The usual way of combining the thought of v.* with the context is indicated 
by Lactantius in proving the unity of the Father and the Son (dzuzn. zustit, iv. 
29): ‘‘ When anyone has a son of whom he is specially fond (quem unice 


diligat), a son who is still in the house and under his father’s authority (in 
manu patris)—he may grant him the name and power of lord (nomen 


1 Our author avoids (see on 2!) éxxAynala, unlike the author of 1 Ti 3!® who 
writes év olkw Oeov, tris early éxxAnaola Tod Geod. 


Xr. 5-6. | AL PLEA’ FOR) LOYALTY 43 


domini potestatemque), yet by civil law (civili iure) the house is one, and one 
is called lord. So this world is one house of God, and the Son and the 
Father, who in harmony (unanimos) dwell in the world, are one God.” 


The second (56) proof of the superiority of Jesus to Moses 
is now introduced by xaé. It rests on the term Oepdmwv used of 
Moses in the context (as well as in Nu 111! 127-8 etc. ; of Moses 
and Aaron in Wis 10! 182!) ; @epawy is not the same as dodAos, 
but for our author it is less than vids, and he contrasts Moses as 
the Oeparwy év 7T@ oikw with Jesus as the Son ézi r6y olkov, ézi 
used as in 107! (iepéa péyayv émi Tov olkov Tod Geov) and Mt 2521-23 
(éri éAtya Hs muxtos). Moses is “ egregius domesticus fidei tuae ” 
(Aug. Conf. xii. 23). The difficult phrase eis 75 paptipiov tov 
AahnOynoonevwy means, like 9%, that the position of Moses was one 
which pointed beyond itself to a future and higher revelation ; 
the tabernacle was a oxyjvn tod paptupiov (Nu 12°) in a deep 
sense. This is much more likely than the idea that the faith- 
fulness of Moses guaranteed the trustworthiness of anything he 
said, or even that Moses merely served to bear testimony of what 
God revealed from time to time (as if the writer was thinking of 
the words oropa kata otopa AaAjow aitd which follow the above- 
quoted text in Numbers). 

The writer now passes into a long appeal for loyalty, which 
has three movements (39719 41-10 411-18), “The first two are con- 
nected with a homily on Ps 95"!! as a divine warning against 
the peril of apostasy, the story of Israel after the exodus from 
Egypt being chosen as a solemn instance of how easy and fatal it 
is to forfeit privilege by practical unbelief. It is a variant upon 
the theme of 27:8, suggested by the comparison between Moses 
and Jesus, but there is no comparison between Jesus and Joshua ; 
for although the former opens up the Rest for the People of 
to-day, the stress of the exhortation falls upon the unbelief and 
disobedience of the People in the past. 


6 Now we are this house of God (ob, from the preceding av’rod), ¢f we wall 
only keep confident and proud of our hope. * Therefore, as the holy Spirit says : 
** Today, when (édv, as in 1 Jn 278) you hear his voice, 
8 harden not (uh oxAnpbvyre, aor. subj. of negative entreaty) your hearts as 
at the Provocation, 
on the day of the Temptation in the desert, 
® where (ob =brov as Dt 81°) your fathers put me to the proof, 
10 and for forty years felt what I could do.” 
Therefore ‘I grew exasperated with that generation, 
I satd, ‘ They are always astray in thetr heart? ; 
they would not learn my ways ; 
11 s9 (ws consecutive) 7 swore tn my anger 
‘ they shall never (el =the emphatic negative ON in oaths) exter my Rest.” 
12 Brothers, take care in case there 1s a wicked, unbelieving heart in any of 
you, moving you to apostatize from the living God. * Rather admonish one 
another (éavrovs=addAndous) dadly, so long as this word ‘* Today” zs uttered, 
that none of you may be decetved by sin and ‘‘ hardened.” 4 For we only 


44, THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS (III. 6-8. 


participate in Christ provided that we keep firm to the very end the confidence 
with whivh we started, © this word ever sounding tn our ears : 

seid oday, when you hear hts voice, 

harden not your hearts as at the Provocation.” 
16 Who heard and yet ‘‘ provoked” him? Was it not all who left Egypt 
under the leadership of Moses? “ And with whom was he exasperated for 
forty years? Was tt not with those who sinned, whose ‘‘corpses\ fell in the 
desert”? 38 And to whom “did he swear that they (sc. abrovs) would never 
enter his Rest”? To whom but those who disobeyed (aretOjoacwy, cp. Ac 19°)? 
19 Thus (kat consecutive) we see it was owing to unbelief that they could not 
enter. 

In v.° (a) o@ is altered into ds by D* M 6. 424 Lat Lucifer, Ambr. Pris- 
cillian, probably owing to the erroneous idea that the definite article (supplied 
by 440. 2005) would have been necessary between of and olkas. (6) édy is 
assimilated to the text of v.!* by a change to édvrep in 8® AC D° K L W 
syr! Lucifer, Chrys. etc. (von Soden). (c) After éAmldos the words péxpr 
téXous BeBalay are inserted from v.!4 by a number of MSS; the shorter, 
correct text is preserved in p’® B 1739 sah eth Lucifer, Ambrose. 


V.% introduces the appeal, by a transition from ®. When 
Philo claims that wappyota is the mark of eee religion - 
(quis rer. ai. haeres, 4, TOUS pay ovv apabéct ouppipov NOVXLA, 
tows b€ é emory pens ediepevois Kal apa prrodecrorors dvaryKa.oTatov 7 
Trappyaia xrnwa), he means by rappyoia the confidence which 1 is 
not afraid to pray aloud: cp. 726. 5 (wappycia dé pirias ovyyeves, 
eel mpos Tiva ay TLs 7) TpOs TOV EavToU Pirov Tappyotdacaito ;), where 
the prayers and remonstrances of Moses are explained as a proof 
that he was God’s friend. But here as elsewhere in the NT 
mappyotia has the broader meaning of “ confidence” which already 
appears in the LXX (e.g. in Job 27! py exer Twa mappyotar 
évavtiov avrov). This confidence is the outcome of the Christian 
éAris (for THs éAidos goes with r7Hv rappyoiay as well as with ro 
Kavxynpa); here as in 4/6 and 101% > it denotes the believing 
man’s attitude to a God whom he knows to be trustworthy. 
The idea of 1d katynpa ths éAmidos is exactly that of Ro 5? 
(kavyopela er eAmids THs O0Ens Tod Geod), and of a saying like 
Ps 5}? (kat edppavOntwoav éri coi ravtes ot €AriCovtes emi Ge). 

Avé in y.” goes most naturally with ph oxAnpuryte (v.8), the 
thought of which recurs in v.! as the central thread. The 
alternative, to take it with BXémere in v.}2, which turns the whole 
quotation into a parenthesis, seems to blunt the direct force of 
the admonition; it makes the parenthesis far too long, and 
empties the second 8&6 of its meaning. BdAéwere is no more 
abrupt in v.!? than in 12%; it introduces a sharp, sudden 
warning, without any particle like ovy or de, and requires no pre- 
vious term like 6.0. The quotation is introduced as in ro! by 
“the holy Spirit” as the Speaker, a rabbinic idea of inspiration. 
The quotation itself is from Ps 95‘ which in A runs as follows: 


1 «@da in this sense is from Nu 14%", a passage which the writer hag 
in mind. 


ITI. 9.] A WARNING 45 


oHpEpov eav THS Huwvyns avTovd axovoyTe, 
pn okAnpivy7Te Tas Kapdias bwOv ws ev TH TapamiKpaTpBOoO 
KATA THV Huepav TOU TELPAaTMOv ev TH epHyw' 
ob éreipacav! ot matEepes Uporv, 
eOokimacav pe Kal Woy TA Epya pov. 
TETTEPAKOVTA ETH TPOTwHXOLCA TH yevea exeivy,? 
Kat eirov'® aet* rrAavOvtar TH Kapdia, 
avrot O€ ovK éyvwoav Tas ddovs pov. 
ws @uooa €v TH Opyy pov, 
ei eiceXevoovTat eis THY KaTamavoly pov. 

In vv.® 1°, though he knew (v.!7) the correct connexion of the 
LXX (cp. v.!"*), he alters it here for his own purpose, taking 
Tesoapdkovta éty With what precedes instead of with what follows, 
inserting 6.6 (which crept into the text of R in the psalm) before 
mpoow Oca, for emphasis, and altering éSoxipacay pe into év doxe- 
pacia.© The LXX always renders the place-names “ Meriba” 
.and ‘‘ Massa” by generalizing moral terms, here by zapamuxpac pos 
and zretpacos, the former only here in the LXX (Aquila, 1 Sam 
15°3; ‘Theodotion, Prov 1711). The displacement of teocepdxovta 
éry was all the more feasible as eidov ra epya pov meant for him 
the experience of God’s punishing indignation. (Teooapdxovta, is 
better attested than teooepdxovra (Moulton, ii. 66) for the first 
century.) There is no hint that the writer was conscious of the 
rabbinic tradition, deduced from this psalm, that the period of 
messiah would last for forty years, still less that he had any idea 
of comparing this term with the period between the crucifixion 
and 70 A.D. What he really does is to manipulate the LXX text 
in order to bring out his idea that the entire forty years in the 
desert were a “‘day of temptation,”® during which the People 
exasperated God. Hence (in v.°) he transfers the “forty years ” 
to eiSov Ta Epya pov, in order to emphasize the truth that the 
stay of the People in the desert was one long provocation of 
God ; for eidov 7a Epya pov is not an aggravation of their offence 


1 x adds me (so T), which has crept (needlessly, for repdfew may be 
used absolutely as in 1 Co 10%) into the text of Hebrews through x* D° M vg 
pesh harkl boh arm Apollin. 

In some texts of Hebrews (p® 8 A B D* M 33. 424** vg Clem. 
Apollin.) this becomes (under the influence of the literal view of forty years ?) 
ravTy (éxelvy in C D° K L P syr sah boh arm eth Eus. Cyril, Chrys. ). 

3 The Ionic form e?za (B) has slipped into some texts of Hebrews (A D 
33. 206. 489. 1288. 1518. 1836). j 

4 The LXX is stronger than the Hebrew; it appears to translate not the 
py of the MT, but o°y (cp. Flashar in Zezts. fiir alt, Wess., 1912, 84-85). 

5 édoxiuacav (ue) is read in the text of Hebrews, by assimilation, in x° D° 
K L vg syr arm eth Apollin. Lucifer, Ambr, Chrys. etc. ze. EAOKI- 
MACIA was altered into EAOKIMACA. 

6 The kard in kara Thy iyuépay (v.8) is temporal as in 11° 727, not ‘‘after the 
manner of” (‘* secundum,” vg). 


46 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS _[III. 9-12. 


(“though they felt what I could do for them”), but a reminder 
that all along God let them feel how he could punish them for. 
their disobedience. Finally, their long-continued obstinacy led 
him to exclude them from the land of Rest. This “ finally” 
does not mean that the divine oath of exclusion was pronounced 
at the end of the forty years in the desert, but that as the result 
of God’s experience he gradually killed off (v.1") all those who 
had left Egypt. This retribution was forced upon him by the 
conviction atroi dé ovk éyvwoav Tas ddovs pov (Z.e. would not learn 
my laws for life, cared not to take my road). 


The rabbinic interpretation of Ps 95 as messianic appears in the legend 
(T.B. Sanxhedrim, 98a) of R. Joshua ben Levi and Elijah. When the rabbi 
was sent by Elijah to messiah at the gates of Rome, he asked, ‘‘ Lord, when 
comest thou?” He answered, ‘‘ To-day.” Joshua returned to Elijah, who 
inquired of him: ‘‘What satd He to thee?” Joshua: ‘* Peace be with thee, 
son of Levi.” Elijah: “‘ Thereby He has assured to thee and thy father a 
prospect of attaining the world to come.” Joshua: ‘* But He has deceived me, - 
by telling me He would come to-day.” Elijah: *‘ Not so, what He meant 
was, To-day, tf you will hear His voice.” The severe view of the fate of the 
wilderness-generation also appears in Sanh. 110d, where it is proved that the 
generation of the wilderness have no part in the world to come, from Nu 
14° and also from Ps 95 (as 7 swore tn my anger that they should not enter 
into my Rest). This was rabbi Akiba’s stern reading of the text. But 
rabbinic opinion, as reflected in the Mishna (cp. W. Bacher, Agada der 
Tannaiten, i. 135 f.), varied on the question of the fate assigned to the 
generation of Israelites during the forty years of wandering in the desert. 
While some authorities took Ps 951! strictly, as if the ‘‘ rest”? meant the rest 
after death, and these Israelites were by the divine oath excluded from the 
world to come, others endeavoured to minimize the text; God’s oath only 
referred to the incredulous spies, they argued, or it was uttered in the haste 
of anger and recalled. In defence of the latter milder view Ps 50° was 
quoted, and Isa 35". Our author takes the sterner view, reproduced later 
by Dante (Purgatorio, xviii. 133-135), for example, who makes the Israelites 
an example of sloth; “‘the folk for whom the sea opened were dead ere 
Jordan saw the heirs of promise.” He never speaks of men ‘‘ tempting God,” 
apart from this quotation, and indeed, except in 1117, God’s meipacuds or 
probation of men is confined to the human life of Jesus. 


For 8&6 in v.!® Clem. Alex. (Protreff. 9) reads 8 3. 
MpoowyOifewy is a LXX term for the indignant loathing excited 
by some defiance of God’s will, here by a discontented, critical 
attitude towards him. In y.!! kardmauows is used of Canaan as 
the promised land of settled peace, as only in Dt 12° (ov yap 
nKate... eis THY KaTaravow) and 1 K 8° (etAoynrds Kiptos 
onpepov, os édwKxev KaTaravot TS Aa@ airod). The mystical sense 
is developed in 45, 

The application (vv.!2f) opens with Bdémere (for the classical 
pare) ph . . . €ora (as in Col 28 (Brérere py . . . Evra), the 
reason for the future being probably “ because the verb eiut has 
no aorist, which is the tense required,” Field, Votes on Trans/la- 
tion of N.T., p. 38) év te buav—the same concern for individuals 


III. 12-14. | A WARNING 47 


as in 44 10% 1215xapdSia dmotias (genitive of quality—a 
Semitism here). ’Azvoria must mean more than “incredulity ” ; 
the assonance with d@roorjvar was all the more apt as dmioria 
denoted the unbelief which issues in action, év t@ dtootqvai—the 
idea as in Ezk 208 kal aréotnocav dm éuot, Kat ovk nbéAnoav 
eigaxovoa pov, though the preposition dé was not needed, as may 
be seen, ¢.g., in Wis 3!9 (of . . . tov Kupiov drooravres). Our 
author is fond of this construction, the infinitive with a preposition. 
“lhe living God” suggests what they lose by their apostasy, 
and what they bring upon themselves by way of retribution 
(1081), especially the latter (cp. 412). There is no real distinction 
between 6cov Cavros and tov Geov Cévtos, for the article could be 
dropped, as in the case of Oeds zaryp and kvpios “Incovs, once the 
expression became stamped and current. 

In v.13 wapakadette . . . Kad Exdotyv Huepay (cp. Zest. Levi 98 
nv kad éxdorynv ypépav ovveti~wy we) emphasizes the keen, constant 
care of the community for its members, which is one feature of 
the epistle. In dyxpts 06 (elsewhere in NT with aorist or future), 
which is not a common phrase among Attic historians and 
orators, aypis is a Hellenistic form of dyps (p!? M) used sometimes 
when a vowel followed. Xypepov is “ God’s instant men call 
years” (Browning), and the paronomasia in kadetrat! . . . mapa- 
kadette led the writer to prefer caXeirat to a term like kypvooerat 
The period (see 4”) is that during which God’s call and oppor- 
tunity still hold out, and the same idea is expressed in éy t@ 
héyeoOar Enpepov «rr. (v.15). é§ budy is sufficiently emphatic as it 
stands, without being shifted forward before 1s (B D K Ldeete. 
harkl Theodt. Dam.) in order to contrast Gpets with of matépes 
Sudy (v.9). As for 4 dpapria, it is the sin of apostasy (12*), which 
like all sin deceives men (Ro 714), in this case by persuading them 
that they will be better off if they allow themselves to abandon the 
exacting demands of God. The responsibility of their position is 
expressed in tva ph oxdnpuvOq, a passive with a middle meaning ; 
men can harden themselves or let lower considerations harden: 
them against the call of God. As Clement of Alexandria 
(Protrept. ix.) explains: épare tHv dreArv’ opare THY mpotpoTny’ 
Opare THY TYnHv. Ti di OvV ETL THY Xapw Eis dpynv peTaAAACOOpEV ...; 
peyddyn yap THs érayyedias adrov 4 xapis, ‘av orpepov THS pwr7s 
aiTov axovoapev ”* TO b€ onpepov THS Pwvys airod avéerat THY HMEpay, 
éot av 7 onpepov 6vopdalyrat. 

In v.14 péroxot tod Xpiotod (which is not an equivalent for the 
Pauline év Xpror@, but rather means to have a personal interest 
in him) answers to pétoxot kAjoews émoupaviou in v.! and to 
petoxous Tvedpatos dyiou in 64; yeydévapev betrays the predilection 
of the writer for yéyova rather than its equivalent eivar. ’Edvmep 

1 The common confusion between at and e led to the variant xadeire (A C). 


48 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS [III. 14-19. 


an intensive particle (for édv, v.°) thy dpxny tis broctdcews 
(genitive of apposition)—~z.e. “ our initial confidence” (the idea 
of 10%2)—xKatdoxwpev (echoing v.°), The misinterpretation of 
imootdcews as (Christ’s) ‘‘substance”? led to the addition of 
avrod (A 588. 623. 1827. 1912 vg). But trdcracrs here as in 
tt! denotes a firm, confident conviction or resolute hope (in 
LXX, eg. Ru 122 éorw poe irdcracis rod yevnOjvar pe avdpt, 
rendering mipn, which is translated by éAzis in Pr 11°), with the 
associations of steadfast patience under trying ciscontga aie 
This psychological meaning was already current (cp.aaieCaror 

1. . KaTarxuvGGpev nucis ev TH Drootace TavTy), alongside 
of the physical or metaphysical. What a man bases himself on, 
as he confronts the future, is his txdoracis, which here in sound 
and even (by contrast) in thought answers to droorjvat. . 

It is possible to regard v.!* as a parenthesis, and connect 
ev TH éyeoOar (v.1°) closely with Tapakaheite or tva ph. . 
dpaptias (v.18), but this is less natural ; év 7@ A€yeo Oar (“ while it 
is said,” asin Ps 424 év 7@ A€yeoOar) Connects easily and aptly 
with AD ee and vyv.!+ 5 thus carry on positively the thought 
of v.18, viz. that the writer and his readers are still within the 
sound of God’s call to his oikos to be motos. 

The pointed questions which now follow (vv.!618) are a 
favourite device of the diatribe style. Mapamxpatvew (Hesych 
wapopyilew)? in v.16 seems to have been coined by the LXX 
to express “rebellious” with a further sense of provoking or 
angering God; e.g. Dt 3127 rapamixpatvovres Are Ta mpos TOV Hedy 
(translating 715), and Dt 3216 ev BdeAvypaow atray raperixpavav 
pe (translating oy3). The sense of “ disobey ” recurs occasionally 
in the LXX psalter (e.g. 10478, 106"'); indeed the term involves 
a disobedience which stirs up the divine anger against rebels, 
the flagrant disobedience (cp. wapaBaivew for M7) in Dt 1%, 
Nu 27!*) which rouses exasperation in God. *AXN’, one rhetorical 
question being answered by another (as Lk 178), logically 
presupposes tuvés, but rives must be read in the previous question. 
By writing mavtes the writer does not stop to allow for the faith- 
ful minority, as Paul does(1 Co 107% tives adrv). In the grave 
conclusion (v.!®) 8° dmortiay (from v.!*) is thrown to the end for 
the sake of emphasis. 

But, the author continues (4), the promised rest is still 
available; it is open to faith, though only to faith (1%), No 
matter how certainly all has been done upon God’s part (*°), 
and no matter how sure some human beings are to share his 


1 Another early error was to regard it as ‘‘ our substance,” so that 7 dpx7 
Ths vrocrdgews meant faith as ‘‘the beginning of our true nature” (a view 
already current in Chrysostom). 

2 In Dt 3278 it is parallel to rapofvvew ; cp. Flashar’s discussion in Ze#t- 
schrift fiir alt, Wiss., 1912, 185 f. It does not always require an object (God). 


Iv. 1.] THE REST OF GOD 49 


Rest (v.°), it does not follow that we shall, unless we take warning 
by this failure of our fathers in the past and have faith in God. 
Such is the urgent general idea of this paragraph. But the 
argument is compressed ; the writer complicates it by defining 
the divine Rest as the sabbath-rest of eternity, and also by 
introducing an allusion to Joshua. That is, he (a) explains 
God’s xataravors in Ps 95 by the caBBaticpes of Gn 2%, and 
then (2) draws an inference from the fact that the psalm-promise 
is long subsequent to the announcement of the caBBariopos. 
He assumes that there is only one Rest mentioned, the xatazavors 
into which God entered when he finished the work of creation, 
to which of warépes tuav were called under Moses, and to which 
Christians are now called. They must never lose faith in it, 
whatever be appearances to the contrary. 

1 Well then, as the promise of entrance into hts Rest zs still left to us, let 
us be afraid of. anyone being judged to have missed tt. * For (kai yap=etenim) 
we have had the good news as well as they (éxeivo.= 3°) ; only, the message 
they heard was of no use to them, because tt did not meet with faith in the 
hearers. * For we do ‘‘ enter the Rest” by our faith: according to hts word, 

‘© As J swore in my anger, 
they shall never enter my Rest”’— 
altnough ‘‘his works” were all over by the foundation of the world. 4 For he 
says somewhere about the seventh (sc. nuépas) day : **And God rested from all 
his works on the seventh day.” *And again im this (év rovtw, sc. Térw) 
passage, “‘they shall never enter my Rest.” 6 Since then zt is reserved 
(dmoXelrera:, a variant for ckaradeur. v. Ufone some she enter zt,” and since 
those who formerly got the good news fazled to ‘‘enter” owing to their disobedt- 
ence, The again fixes a day; ‘‘today”—as he saysin ‘ David” after so long 
an interval, and as has been already quoted: 
** Today, when you hear hts voice, 
harden not your hearts.” 
8 Thus if Joshua had given them Rest, God would not speak later about another 
day. There ts a sabbath-Kkest, then, reserved (darohelrerat, as in ®) ste// for 
the People of God (for once “<a man enters his (avrov, z.e. God’ i rest,” he 
‘* vests from work” just as God did). 
'Emayyehia (v.') is not common in the LXX, though it mis- 
translates 75D in Ps 568, and is occasionally the term for a 


human promise. In the Prayer of Manasseh (°) it is the divine 
promise (ro édeos tis érayyeAias gov), and recurs in the plural, 
of the divine promises, in Zest. Jos. 201 (6 Geds Tojo Thy 
eKOLKNO LY Dav Kat er acet Upas eis TOS éerayyeAtas TOV TaTépwv 
ipov) and Ps. Sol 128 (dro. Kvpiov KAnpovopynoaey érayyedias 
xuptov—the first occurrence of this phrase «A. éz., cp. below on 
612). Katadevropevns émayyedtas (+77s D* 255, from 61: 17 179) 
isa genitive absolute. “EmayyeNtas eicehOety (like dpu7 . . . tBpioca 
in Ac 14°) xrA.: the basis of the appeal is (a) that the divine 
promise of Rest has been neither fulfilled nor withdrawn (still 76 
* gyuepov” Kadeirar) ; and (2) that the punishment which befalls 
1’ Arel@e.av, altered into dmiorlay by x* vg sah boh arm Cyr. 


4 


50 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS [LV el ae: 


others is a warning to ourselves (cp. Philo, ad Gatum, 1: at yap 
érépwv typwptar BeAtiodtar Tods ToAXAOVs, POBw Tod py wapamrAHoLa 
madeiv). By a well-known literary device pi mote, like’ py in 
1215, takes a present (Soxy), instead of the more usual aorist, 
subjunctive. Aokj means “judged” or “adjudged,” as in 
Josephus, Azz. viil. 32, Kav ddXAdrpiov doxyj. This is common in 
the LXX, e.g. in Pr 1728 évedy 8€ tus Eavrdv moujoas dd€eu ppdvipos 
elvau (where doe is paralleled by AoywrOyoerar), 27'4 (karapwpeévov 
ovdev diapépe ddée); indeed it is an ordinary Attic use which 
goes back to Plato (e.g. Phaedo, 113 D, of the souls in the under- 
world, ot pev av ddfwor peows BeBiwxévar) and Demosthenes 
(629. 17, of dedoypévor avdpopdvor=the convicted murderers). 
The searching scrutiny which passes this verdict upon lack of 
faith is the work of the divine Logos (in v.}), | 

In v.? ednyyeAvopévot is remarkable. Our author, who never 
uses evayyé\vov (preferring érayyeAia here as an equivalent),. 
employs the passive of ebayyeAtZev ! (as in v.®) in the broad sense 
of ‘having good news brought to one.” ‘The passive occurs in 
LXX of 2S 183! (evayyeAtcOyjtw 6 Kvpids pou 6 BaciAcd’s) and in 
Mt 115 (rrwxot edayyeAtlovrar). The xai after kaOdmep emphasizes 
as usual the idea of correspondence. The reason for the failure 
of the past generation was that they merely heard what God 
said, and did not believe him; 6 Aédyos tis &kofjs (axojs, passive 
= “sermo auditus,” vg), which is another (see 3!) instance of the 
Semitic genitive of quality, is defined as py (causal particle as 
in 1127 wn PoBnOeis) cuykek(e)pa(c)pévos TH wloter Tols dxovcaow, 
since it did not get blended with faith in (the case of) those who 
heard it. Or tr wiore may be an instrumental dative: “since it 
did not enter vitally into the hearers by means of the faith which 
it normally awakens in men.” The fault lies, as in the parable 
of the Sower, not with the message but with the hearers. The 
phrase Adyos . . . ovyKexpacpeévos may be illustrated from Men- 
ander (Stob. Sevm. 42, p. 302), THY Tod Adyou pev divapw ovdk 
éripOovov nha d€ xpyoTo® ovyKkexpapevyv éxew, and Plutarch, xox 
posse suautter vivt secundum Epicurum, 1101, Bédtwov yap évuTdp- 
xew TeKal ovyKexpacbar TH Tept Oedv ddEn Kowdy aidods Kal PdBov 
maQos xtX. ‘The use of Adyos with such verbs is illustrated by 
Plutarch, Vit. Cleom. 2 (6 d&€ Zrwikds Adyos ... Babe SE Kai 
mpdw Kepavvipevos Oe pdadrtota eis TO oixetov dyabdv émididwow). 
Kpaovs occurs in Philo’s definition of Ata (Quaest. in Gen. 218) 
as consisting [ot«] év 7@ xpeuider padAXov 7) Kpdoer Kal cupdwvia 
BeBaiw trav 7OGv, and ovyxexpacOa: in his description of the 
union of spirit and blood in the human body (Quaest. in 
Gen. 91 rvedpa . . . euhéperbat kai cvyKexpacOat atart). 


1 An almost contemporary instance (evayyeNlfovre Ta Tis velxns a’rod kal 
mpoxom7s) of the active verb is cited by Mitteis-Wilcken, i. 2. 29. 


IV. 3, 4.] THE REST OF GOD 51 


The original reading ovykex(e)pa(o)uévos (& 114 vt pesh Lucif.) was soon 
assimilated (after éxeivous) into the accusative -ovs (p!’§ ABC DKLM Pvg 
boh syr®*! etc. Chrys. Theod.-Mops. Aug.), and this led to the alteration of 
Tois dkovcacw into Tav dkovodvrwy (D* 104. 1611. 2005 d syr>k!ms Lucif.), 
or Tois dkovoGeiow (1912 vg Theod.-Mops.), or rots dxovovow (1891). The 
absence of any allusion elsewhere to the faithful minority (Caleb, Joshua) 
tells decisively against ouyxexpacuévous (‘‘since they did not mix with the 
believing hearers”); for the writer (see above) never takes them into account, 
and, to make any sense, this reading implies them. How could the majority 
be blamed for not associating with believing hearers when ex hypothes? there 
were none such ? 


~The writer now (vv.310) lays emphasis upon the reality of 
the Rest. ‘‘ We have had this good news too as well as they,” 
for (yap) we believers do enter into God’s Rest; it is prepared 
and open, it has been ready ever since the world began—dpa 
Grohetretat oaBBaticpos TH aS Tod Oeod. Eicepyducba is the 
emphatic word in v.®: ‘‘ we do (we are sure to) enter,” the futuristic 
present (“ingrediemur,” vg). When God excluded that unbe- 
lieving generation from his Rest, he was already himself in his 
Rest. The xatdmavoig was already in existence; the reason 
why these men did not gain entrance was their own unbelief, not 
any failure on God’s part to have the Rest ready. Long ago it 
had been brought into being (this is the force of katrou in v.°), 
for what prevents it from being realized is not that any épya of 
God require still to be done. Kardzavois is the sequel to épya. 
The creative épya leading up to this xardravois have been com- 
pleted centuries ago; God enjoys his xatdravo.s, and if his 
People do not, the fault lies with themselves, with man’s disbelief. 


Here, as in Ro 378, there is a choice of reading between ofy (x AC M 
1908 boh) and ydép (p® B DK LP ¥ 6. 33 lat syr®*! eth Chrys. Lucif. 
etc.) ; the colourless 5é (syrPes» arm) may be neglected. The context is de- 
cisive in favour of ydp. Probably the misinterpretation which produced ofp 
led to the change of elcepxydueba into eloepywuedat (AC 33. 69*: future in 
vg sah boh Lucif.). The insertion of r#v (the first) may be due to the same 
interpretation, but not necessarily; p!® B D* om., but B omits the article 
sometimes without cause (e.g. 71°). The omission of e/ (p'® D* 2. 330. 440. 
623. 642. 1288. 1319. 1912) was due to the following ef in eloeNedoovrat. 


Kairot (with gen. absol., as OP. 898°) is equivalent here to 
xairovye for which it is av./. in Ac 1727 (A E, with ptc.).  ‘‘ Kadrou, 
ut antiquiores xaizrep, passim cum participio iungunt scriptores 
aetatis hellenisticae” (Herwerden, Appendix Lexici Graect, 249). 
KataBody is not a LXX term, but appears in Zp. Arvisteas, i 29 
and 2 Mac 29 (ris oAns KaraBorAjs =the entire edifice); in the 
NT always, except He 11, in the phrase azo or po kataBodjs 
KOO LOV. 

The writer then (v.*) quotes Gn 2?, inserting 6 Oeds év (exactly 
as Philo had done, de poster. Caini, 18), as a proof that the xartd- 

1 A similar error of A C in 63, 


52 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS [IV. 5-8. 


mauois had originated immediately after the six days of creation. 
In cipyxe wou the mou is another literary mannerism (as in Philo); 
instead of quoting definitely he makes a vague allusion (cp. 2°). 
The psalm-threat is then (v.5) combined with it, and (v.®) the 
deduction anu that the threat (v.”) implies a promise (though 
not as if v.! meant, ‘‘lest anyone imagine he has come too late 
for it”—an interpretation as old as Schottgen, and still advo- 
cated, e.g., by Dods). 


The title of the 92nd psalm, ‘‘for the sabbath-day,” was discussed 
about the middle of the 2nd century by R. Jehuda and R. Nehemia; the 
former interpreted it to mean the great Day of the world to come, which 
was to be one perfect sabbath, but R. Nehemia’s rabbinical tradition pre- 
ferred to make it the seventh day of creation on which God rested (see W. 
Bacher’s Agada der Tannazten’, i. pp. 328-329). The author of the Epistle 
of Barnabas (15) sees the fulfilment of Gn 2? in the millennium: ‘‘he rested 
on the seventh day” means that ‘“‘ when his Son arrives he will destroy the 
time of the lawless one, and condemn the impious, and alter sun and moon 
and stars ; then he will really rest on the seventh day,” and Christians cannot 
enjoy their rest till then. Our author’s line is different—different even from 
the Jewish interpretation in the Vzta Adae et Evae (li. 1), which makes the 
seventh day symbolize ‘‘ the resurrection and the rest of the age to come; on 
the seventh day the Lord rested from all his works.” 


In v.' peta tocottov xpdvoy, like peta taita (v.°), denotes the 
interval of centuries between the desert and the psalm of David, 
for év AaveiS means “‘in the psalter” (like év "HAia, Ro 112); the 
g5th psalm is headed aivos odjs 7G Aaveid in the Greek bible, 
but the writer throughout (37) treats it as a direct, divine word. 
Mpoetpynrat (the author alluding to his previous quotation) i is the 
original; text;(p’ .A.C/D* P 6. 33. 1611. 1908. 2004. 2005 lat 
syr Chrys. Cyr. Lucif.) ; mpoeipyxey (B 256. 263. 436. 442. 999. 
1739. 1837 arm sah boh Orig.) suggests that God or David 
spoke these words before the oath (v.? comes before v.1!!), while 
eipnrat (D° K L eth etc. Theophyl.) is simply a formula of 
quotation. From the combination of Ps 957-8 with Ps 95!! and 
Gn 2? (vv.3-7) the practical inference is now drawn (v.8"). Like 
Sirach (46™ Kparauos ev ToAE mous ‘Ingots Navy . . . ds éyévero 
KaTa TO OVOLA avTOD hub ért owrypia éxrexTav airod), Philo (de 
mutatione nominum, *Inaoots 6é [€punveverar] cwrnpla Kuptov, 
eSews Ovopx.a THS holes) had commented on the religious signifi- 
cance of the name Joshua; but our author ignores this, and 
even uses the name Tycos freely, since Iycots is never applied 
by him to Christ before the incarnation (Aquila naturally avoids 
"Inoods and prefers ‘Iwcova). The author of Ep. Barnabas plays 
on the fact that “Joshua ” and “Jesus” are the same names: 
éXrioate él Tov ev capi péAXovTA pavepotobar t iptv “Inoodty (6°), 
#.e. not on the “ Jesus” who led Israel into the land of rest, but 
on the true, divine ‘‘Joshua.” Such, he declares, is the inner 


IV. 8-10. THE REST OF GOD 53 


meaning of Is 2816 (és éAmioa én airov Cyoerat eis Tov aidva), 
But the author of [pds “Efpaious takes his own line, starting from 
the transitive use of katamavew (Jos 18 kvpios 6 beds tyav Karte 
Tavoev bas Kal edwkey tuiv THY yyv TavTynv, etc.); not that he 
reads subtle meanings into the transitive and intransitive usages 
of xatamavewv, like Philo. Nor does he philosophize upon the 
relevance of xatdazavois to God. Philo, in De Cherubim (26), 
explains why Moses calls the sabbath (épunveverar 8 dvamavors) 
the “sabbath of God” in Ex 20! etc.; the only thing which 
really rests is God—‘“‘rest (dvd7avAav) meaning not inactivity 
in good (arpagiav xad@v)—for the cause of all things which is 
active by nature never ceases doing what is best, but—an energy 
devoid of laboriousness, devoid of suffering, and moving with 
absolute ease.” The movement and changes of creation point 
to labour, but “what is free from weakness, even though it 
moves all things, will never cease to rest: wore oiketordtatov 
povy Ged 70 avarraver Oa.” So in De Sacrif. Abelis et Caint, 8, 
TOV TOTOVTOVY KOTHOV dvev TOvwWV Tada pev cipydtero, vuvt dé Kal 
cicacl ovvexwv ovderore Ajye [cp. He 1° dépwv te 7a Tavtal, bed 
yap TO akdpatov dppodiwtatov. All such speculations are remote 
from our author. He simply assumes (a) that God’s promise of 
Katdmavots is spiritual; it was not fulfilled, it was never meant 
to be fulfilled, in the peaceful settlement of the Hebrew clans 
in Canaan; (0) as a corollary of this, he assumes that it is 
eschatological. 

In v.® dpa, as in 128, Lk 1148, Ac 1118, Ro 1017, is thrown to 
the beginning by an unclassical turn (‘‘musste dem gebildeten 
Hellenen hochgradig anstossig erscheinen,” Radermacher, 20). 
LaBBatiopds, apparently! a word coined by the writer, is a Sem- 
itic-Greek compound. The use of caBBatiopods for xatdmavoers is 
then (v.!°) justified in language to which the closest parallel is 
Apoc 14%. “Rest” throughout all this passage—and the writer 
never refers to it again—is the blissful existence of God’s faithful 
in the next world. As a contemporary apocalyptist put it, in 
4 Es 852; “for you paradise is opened, the tree of life planted, 
the future age prepared, abundance made ready, a City built, a 
Rest appointed” (xaréora6y?). In dad trav idiwv, as in 8a Tod 
iSiou atyatos (1312), idios is slightly emphatic owing to the context; 
it is not quite equivalent to the possessive pronoun. 


When Maximus of Tyre speaks of life as a long, arduous path to the goal 
of bliss and perfection, he describes in semi-mystical language how tired 
souls, longing for the land to which this straight and narrow and little- 
frequented way leads, at length reach it and ‘‘rest from their labour” 
(Dissert. xxiii.). 


1 The only classical instance is uncertain; Bernadakis suspects it in the 
text of Plutarch, de superstzt. 166 A. 


54 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS [IV. 11, 12. 


The lesson thus drawn from the reading of the OT passages 
is pressed home (vv.1"!) with a skilful blend of encollragement 
and warning. 

U Let us be eager then to ‘enter that Rest,” in case anyone falls into the 
same sort of disobedience. 1* For the Logos of God ts a living thing, active 
and more cutting than any sword with double edge, penetrating to the very 
division of soul and spirit, joints and marrow—scrutinizing the very thoughts 
and conceptions of the heart. 1° And no created thing is hidden from him ; 
all things lie open and exposed before the eyes of him with whom we have to 
reckon (6 \dyos). 

In v.!! the position of tus, as, ¢.g., in Lk 1818, is due to “the 
tendency which is to be noted early in Greek as well as in cognate 
languages, to bring unemphasized (enclitic) pronouns as near to 
the beginning of the sentence as possible” (Blass, § 473. 1). 
For wimrew év, cp. Epict. iil. 22. 48, wore tuav elde&y pé Tis. . 
ev exxXioe tepimimtovta. This Hellenistic equivalent for rimrew 
eis goes back to earlier usage, e.g. Eurip. Herve. 1091, 1092, 
év kAvowve Kal ppevav tapdypart méertwxa deve. In Hellenistic 
Greek irddevyya came to have the sense of rapddevyya, and is 
used here loosely for “kind” or “sort”; take care of falling into 
disobedience like that of which these ania vpav yield such a 
tragic example. The writer, with his fondness for periphrases of 
this kind, writes év 76 a7 Grodelypate Tis deelas, where év TH 
airy ameeia, would have served. In passing away from the text 
about Rest, he drops this last warning reference to the classical 

example of deca in the far past of the People. 

The connexion of thought in vv.1!4 is suggested by what has 
been already hinted in v.}, where the writer pled for anxiety, uy 
mote doy Tis €€ tuav torepnkévat, He repeats va py... Ts 
. . . wéoy, and enlarges upon what lies behind the term dox7. 
Then, after the passage on the relentless scrutiny of the divine 
Logos, he effects a transition to the direct thought of God (v.!%), 
with which the paragraph closes. ZmouSdowpev—we have to put 
heart and soul into our religion, for we are in touch with a God 
whom nothing escapes ; fav ydp xrX. (v.12). The term Gv echoes 
Geds Cov in 3!2 (men do not disobey God with impunity), just as 
Kapodias echoes xapdia movnpa amurtias. God is swift to mark any 
departure from his will in human thought—the thought that 
issues in action. ' 

The personifying of the divine déyos, in a passage which 
described God in action, had already been attempted. In Wis 
1815, for example, the plagues of Egypt are described as the effect 
of God's Aoyos coming into ‘play : 6 mayTodvvayos cov Adyos amr 
ovpavav .. . Eidos 6€v THv dvuTOKpLTov eritayynv cov dépwv. In 
Wis? again, the ¢diAdvOpwrrov Tvevpa copia, which cannot 
tolerate blasphemy, reacts against it: ore TOV veppav avtod (the 
blasphemer) pdprus 6 Oeds, kal ris Kapdias airod éxicKxomros d&AnONs, 


IV. 12. | THE SCRUTINY OF GOD 55 


so that no muttering of rebellion is unmarked. Here the writer 
poetically personifies the revelation of God for amoment. ‘O 
Adyos tov Peod is God speaking, and speaking in words which 
are charged with doom and promise (37"). The revelation, how- 
ever, is broader than the scripture ; it includes the revelation of 
God’s purpose in Jesus (11*). The free application of 6 Adyos 
(rod Oeov) in primitive Christianity is seen in 1 P 128, Ja 118%, 
quite apart from the specific application of the term to the 
person of Christ (Jn 11!8), Here it denotes the Christian gospel 
declared authoritatively by men like the writer, an inspired 
message which carries on the OT revelation of God’s promises 
and threats, and which is vitally effective. No dead letter, this 
Adyos! The rhetorical outburst in vv.!%" is a preacher’s equiva- 
lent for the common idea that the sense of God’s all-seeing 
scrutiny should deter men from evil-doing, as, ¢g., in Plautus 
(Captivi, 11. 2. 63, “est profecto deu’, qui quae nos gerimus 
auditque et uidet”). This had been deepened by ethical writers 
like Seneca (Z/. Ixxxili. 1, ‘‘ nihil deo clusum est, interest animis 
nostris et cogitationibus mediis intervenit”), Epictetus (il. 14. 11, 
ovx éott Aabety aitov od povov ToodivTa GAN ovde Stavoovpevov 7 
évOupovpevov), and the author of the Zpzstle of Arvisteas (132-133: 
Moses teaches Oru jrovos 6 Geos éote . . . Kat ovbev aitov AavOaver 
Tov éml yns ywouevwv im dvOpwrwv kpupiws . . . Kav evvonOf tis 
Kakiav émiteAelv, ok av AdOor, py OTL Kal mpadéas, and 210: the 
characteristic note of piety is To dvuaAapBavew ort ravra diaravrTos 6 
Oeds evepyet Kat ywwokel, Kai obey dv Ado adikoy TojTas 7} KAKOV 
épyacdpevos avOpwiros), as well as by apocalyptists like the author 
of Baruch (83°: He will assuredly examine the secret thoughts 
and that which is laid up in the secret chambers of all the 
members of man). But our author has one particular affinity. 
Take Philo’s interpretation of dvetAkev atta péoa in Gn 15}? 
Scripture means, he explains (guzs rer. div. haeres, 26) that it 
was God who divided them, 76 ropret TO TvpavTwv EavTod Ady, 
ds eis THY GévTaTHV aKovnbeis dkunv Siatpav oddérroTe Ajyer. TA yap 
aicOnra mavra émeidav péxpt TOV aTopwv Kal Acyouevwv dpepav 
dueECAOn, adw ard TovTwv TA Adyw GewpyTa eis ayvOyTovs Kat 
dreptypadous poipas dpxetat diatpety ovtos 6 Tove’s. He returns 
(in 48) to this analytic function of the Logos in God and man, 
and in De mutatione nominum (18) speaks of jKovnpevov kal 6€dv 
Aoyov, pactevew Kai avalyretv Exacta ixavov, Still, the Logos is 
romevs as the principle of differentiation in the universe, rather 
than as an ethical force ; and when Philo connects the latter with 
6 Adyos, as he does in guod deter. pot. 29, Cherub. 9, etc., 6 oyos 
is the human faculty of reason. Obviously, our author is using 
Philonic language rather than Philonic ideas. 

"Evepyns (for which B, by another blunder, has évapyys= 


56 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS [Iv. 12. 


evidens) is not a LXX term, but denotes in Greek vital activity 
(cp. Schol. on Soph. Oed. Tyr. 45, Caoas avti évepyerrépas). 
Neither is rouarepos a LXX term; the comparison of 6 Adyos to 
a sword arose through the resemblance between the tongue and 
a “dagger,” though pdyaipa had by this time come to mean a 
sword of any size, whether long (fouzpata) or short.1 The com- 
parative is followed (cp. Lk 168) by tmép, as elsewhere by zrapa, 
and the “cutting” power of 6 Adyos extends or penetrates to the 
innermost recesses of human nature—édypt peptopod uxfs Kat 
TVEULATOS,” Gppav Te Kal pueddy (the conj. weA@v =limbs is neat 
but superfluous, for pveA@v was in the text known to Clem. 
Alex. guis dives, 41). DK here (as in 11°?) insert re before the 
first xa‘, but there is no idea of distinguishing the psychical and — 
the physical spheres ; dppwv . . . pwrveAwy is merely a metaphorical 
equivalent for Wux7ns Kal mvevuatos. Mepicpds (only in LXX in 
Jb 1178, 2 Es 618) means here “ division,” not ‘‘ distribution ” (24) ; 
the subtlest relations of human personality, the very border-line 
between the wuxy and the mvetpa, all this is open to 6 Adyos. The 
metaphorical use of pveddy in this sense is as old as Euripides, 
who speaks of wx mpos axpov pvedov Wuyns (Hippolytus, 255). 
According to Philo (De Cherubim, 8. 9), the flaming sword of Gn 3% is a 
symbol either of the sun, as the swiftest of existences (circling the whole 
world in a single day), or of reason, dguxiwnrérarov yap Kal Oépwov Adbyos Kal 
dducTa 6 Tov alriov. Learn from the fiery sword, o my soul, he adds, 
to note the presence and power of this divine Reason, 8s ovdémrore dryyet 
Kiwwovpmevos orovdn mdaoyn mpos alpeciw pev Trav Kahr, pvynv Oé Tov évartiwv. 
But there is a still better parallel to the thought in Lucian’s account of the 
impression made by the address (6 Adyos) of a philosopher: ov yap é& émcrod7js 
00d ws éruxev Hudv 6 Adyos Kabixero, Badeta dé Kal Kalpios ) wAnynh éyéveTo, 
kal udra evardxws évex dels 0 Adyos adrjv, el oldv Te elrely, Suexove Thy WuxHv 
(Migr. 35). Only, Lucian proceeds to compare the soul of a cultured person 
to a target at which the words of the wise are aimed. Similarly, in pseudo- 
Phocylides, 124: dmAov rot Adyos avdpi Touwrepov éart otdypov, and Od. Sol. 


12°: for the swiftness of the Word is inexpressible, and like its expression is 
its swiftness and force, and its course knows no limit. 


The pepiopot . .. puek@v passage is “a mere rhetorical 
accumulation of terms to describe the whole mental nature of 
man” (A. B. Davidson); the climax is xapdia, for what underlies 
human failure is xapdia movypa dmiotias (3!%), and the writer’s 
warning all along has been against hardening the heart, 22, 
obdurate disobedience. Hence the point of kal kpitixds xTA, 
Kpurixds is another of his terms which are classical, not religious ; 
it is used by Aristotle (2th. W7k. vi. 10) of 4 ovveors, the in- 
telligence of man being xprrixy in the sense that it discerns. If 


* The description was familiar to readers of the LXX, e.g. Pr 54 jKovnuévov 
MadXNov waxalpas diorduov. 

* The subtlety of thought led afterwards to the change of mvevmaros into 
owparos (2. 38. 257. 547. 1245). 


IV. 12, 13. ] THE SCRUTINY OF GOD 57 


there is any distinction between évOupijcewy (éevOuuyjoews C* D* W 
vt Lucifer) and évvoi@y, it is between impulses and reflections, 
but contemporary usage hardly distinguished them; indeed 
evvoca could mean “ purpose” as well as “‘conception.” The two 
words are another alliterative phrase for ‘‘thought and con- 
ception,” évvora, unlike évOvunous, being a LXX term. 

In v.18 Kal odk €otw Ktlots dbavys KTA., kTiots Means anything 
created (as in Ro 8%), and aérod is ‘‘God’s.” The negative side 
is followed by the positive, mdvta 8€ yupvd Kal tetTpaxndropeva. 
The nearest verbal parallel is in En 9° rdvra éveridy cov havepa Kat 
axaAvmra, where the context points as here to secret sins. The 
general idea was familiar ; e.g. (above, p. 55) “nihil deo clusum 
est, interest animis nostris et cogitationibus mediis intervenit.” 
Move yap eeote Gew, Wuxi ideiv (Philo, de Abrahamo, 21). But 
what the writer had in mind was a passage like that in de Cherub. 
5, where Philo explains Dt 2979 (ra xpumra kupiw TO Ged, Ta Be 
pavepa yeverer yvwpiua) by arguing, yevyTos dé ovdels ikavos yvopns 
adavovs katie €vOvpnpa, povos de 6 Oeds. Hence, he adds, the 
injunction (Nu 5}®) rv woyiv “ évaytTiov Tov Geov orjoa” with 
head uncovered ; which means, the soul 76 Kepddavov Soypa YU RY w- 
Getoayv Kal THY yvopny a Kéxpyntat atrappiacbeioay, tv’ oweot Tals aKpt- 
Beorarats érixpiOetoa Tov adexacTov Geov krX., the closing description 
of God being 76 povw yupvav pxqv en duvapevw. For yupva 
see also M. Aurel. 12? 6 Geds ravta Ta HyewoviKa yuuva Tov bALKOY 
ayyelwv . . . Opd. Tetpaxndtopéva Must mean something similar, 
“exposed” or “bared” (‘‘aperta,” vg; wepavepwueva, Hesych.). 

Though rpaxnAlfw does not occur in the LXX, the writer was familiar with 
it in Philo, where it suggests a wrestler ‘‘downing” his opponent by seizing 
his throat. How this metaphorical use of throttling or tormenting could yield 
the metaphorical passive sense of ‘‘ exposed,” is not easy tosee. The Philonic 
sense of “‘depressed” or “‘bent down” would yield here the meaning 
‘“abashed,” z.e. hanging down the head in shame (‘‘ conscientia male factorum 
in ruborem aguntur caputque mittunt,’”” Wettstein). But this is hardly ona 
level with yupvd. The most probable clue is to be found in the practice of 
exposing an offender’s face by pushing his head back, as if the word were an 
equivalent for the Latin ‘‘resupinata” in the sense of ‘‘ manifesta,” The 
bending back of the neck produced this exposure. Thus when Vitellius was 
dragged along the Via Sacra to be murdered, it was ‘‘reducto coma capite, 


ceu noxii solent, atque etiam mento mucrone gladii subrecto, ut visendam 
praeberet faciem ” (Suet. Vit. Vetell. 17). 


In the last five words, mpds dv stv 6 Adyos, which are impressive 
by their bare simplicity, there is a slight play on the term Adyos 
here and in y.?2, although in view of the flexible use of the term, 
e.g. in 514 and 131’, it might be even doubtful if the writer intended 
more than a verbal assonance. ‘The general sense of the phrase 
is best conveyed by “ with whom we have to reckon.” (a) This 
rendering, ‘‘to whom we have to account (or, to render our ac- 
count),” was adopted without question by the Greek fathers from 


58 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS [IV. 18, 14. 


Chrysostom (aird pédAomev Sodvar eiOivas TOv Tempaypyevwv) ON- 
wards, and the papyri support the origin of the phrase as a com: 
mercial metaphor; ¢g. OP. 11885 (A.D. 13) ws mpdos oe Tov rept 
Tov a yvan| Oerzioy Gl rjiparos] éro| pevov] (s¢. Adyov), and Hibeh 
Papyti, 53* (246 B.C.) meipO otv dododrds as Tpds GE TOD Adyov 
ésouevov. (4) The alternative rendering, ‘‘ with whom we have to 
do,” has equal support in Gk. usage ; e.g. in the LXX phrase Adyos 
prot mpos oe(I K 214, 2 K g®) and in Je 17? (naxpav eiow Bdwviwr, 
kal Adyov ovK éxovatv mpds avOpwrov). The former idea is pre- 
dominant, however, as the context suggests (cp. Ignat. ad Magn. 3, 
70 5¢ rovotrov od pds adpKxa 6 Adyos, GAAG mpos Oeov Tov Ta KpUduo. 
eiddra), and includes the latter. It is plainly the view of the 
early anti-Marcionite treatise, which has been preserved among 
the works of Ephraem Syrus (cp. Preuschen, Ze¢tschrift fiir die 
neutest. Wissenschaft, 1911, pp. 243-269), where the passage is 
quoted from a text like this: @s cat 6 IlatAos A€yer, Cv 6 Adyos 
Tov Geod Kat TOMMTEPOS vmrép Tao av pd. xarpav Sioropov, dtikvovpevov 
HEXpL PEpLo pov Tvevpatos Kal TAPKOS, HEXpL appov TE Kal prehay, 
Kal KPLTLKOS cor evOupnoewy KOL evvoLw Kapdias’ Kal OUK cor 
ktiots adavys évwomiov avTod, GAAG wavTa éuhavy éevwdmiov avTod, Ort 
yupvol Kal TeTpaxnAtcmevor eopev ev Tots 6POadpots adrovd exacros 
npav Adyov aiT@ aodiddvar. The rendering, ‘ who is our subject, 
of whom we are speaking” (zpés=with reference to, and ypiv 6 
Aoyos as in 514), is impossibly flat. 

At this point the writer effects a transition to the main theme, 
which is to occupy him till 1018, z.e. Christ as dpyvepevs. He begins, 
however, by a practical appeal (vv.!416) which catches up the 
ideas O1jah noo) 


1445 we have a great highpriest, then, who has passed through the heavens, 
Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast to our confession ; ° for ours ts no high 
priest who ts incapable (uh Suv. as in 9°) of sympathizing with our weaknesses, 
but one who has been tempted tn every respect like ourselves (sc. mpos hus), yet 
without sinning. '8 So let us approach the throne of grace with confidence 


(wera trappnolas, 3°), that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in 
the hour of need. 


Méyas is a favourite adjective for dpyepevs in Philo,! but when 
the writer adds, €xyovres otv dpxiepea peyav SireAnAVOdTA Tors 
ovpavous, he is developing a thought of hisown. The greatness 
of Jesus as dpxepevs consists in his access to God not through 
any material veil, but through the upper heavens; he has pene- 
trated to the very throne of God, in virtue of his perfect self- 
sacrifice. This idea is not elaborated till later (cp. 61% 924f), in 
the sacerdotal sense. But it has been already mentioned in 2% 19, 
where Jesus the Son of God saves men by his entrance into the 
full divine glory. Kpara@pev here as in 68 with the genitive 


16 pév 5h wéyas apxtepeds (de Somn. i. 38), even of the Logos. 


IV. 14-16.] THE SYMPATHY OF JESUS 59 


(6poroyids, see 31); in Paul it takes the accusative. The writer 
now (v.!°) reiterates the truth of 2"; the exalted Jesus is well 
able to sympathize with weak men on earth, since he has shared 
their experience of temptation. It is put negatively, then posi- 
tively. XupmaPAoo is used of Jesus! as in Acta Pauli et Theclae, 
17 (0s povos cvverdbnoev TAaVWLEvM Koop); See below, on 10*4, 
Origen (tz Matt. xiii. 2) quotes a saying of Jesus: 81a tovs doGev- 
odvtas noOévovv Kal dua Tovs rewdvras ézeivwv Kal dia Tos SupavtTas 
édiwwy, the first part of which may go back to Mt 817 (atrés ras 
doGeveias éAaBev); cp. also Mt 255%. Philo uses the term even 
of the Mosaic law (de spec. leg. ii. 13, TO 5€ Grrdpws ExovTe ouve- 
mdaOyoe), but here it is more than “to be considerate.” The aid 
afforded by Jesus as dpxiepevs is far more than official; it is 
inspired by fellow-feeling tats doOevetats fav. ‘‘ Verius sentiunt 
qui simul cum externis aerumnis comprehendunt animi affectus, 
quales sunt metus, tristitia, horror mortis, et similes” (Calvin). 
These doOévera are the sources of temptation. °“H cdpé dofevys, 
as Jesus had said to his disciples, warning them against tempta- 
tion. Jesus was tempted xata mdvra (21718) KaG’ dpodrnta (a 
psychological Stoic term; the phrase occurs in OF. ix. 120274 
and BG UV. 1028*, in second- -century inscriptions) xwplis dpaprtias, 
without yielding to sin. Which isa real ground for encourage- 
| ment, for the best help is that afforded by those who have stood 
where we slip and faced the onset of temptation without yielding 
_ to it. The special reference is to temptations leading to apostasy 
or disobedience to the will of God. It is true that Xwpis dpaprias 
does exclude some temptations. Strictly speaking, xara rdvra is 
modified by this restriction, since a number of our worst tempta- 
tions arise out of sin previously committed. But this is not in 
the writer’s mind at all. He is too eager, to enter into any 
psychological analysis. 


Philo deduces from Ly 4° (udvov ok dvrixpus dvadiddoxwy, bre 6 mpods 
arAnGerav dpxrepeds kal wh Pevdwruuos auéroxos auaprnudtrwv éorly) that the 
ideal highpriest is practically sinless (de Vzc¢tzmzs, 10) ; but this is a thought with 
which he wistfully toys, and the idea of the Logos as unstained by contact with 
the material universe is very different from this conception of Jesus as actually 
tempted and scatheless. Nor would the transference of the idea of messiah as 
sinless account for our writer’s view. To him and his readers Jesus is sinless, 
not in virtue of a divine prerogative, but as the result of a real human experience 
which proved successful in the field of temptation. 


Hence (v.!®) mpocepyxdpeba. ody peta mappynoias. Philo (guzs rer. 
div. haeres, 2) makes rappycia the reward of a good conscience, 
which enables a loyal servant of God to approach him frankly. 


1 Of God in 4 Mac 5” kara plow juiv cuumabel vomoberav 6 rob Ktlorns, 
but in the weaker sense of consideration. It is curious that 4 Mac., like 
Hebrews, uses the word twice, once of God and once of men (cp. 4 Mac 13” 
otrws 5h rolvuy Kabeorynkulas THs PradeAdlas cuptabovons). 


60 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS [Iv. 16 


But here (cp. LAE. 11. 786) rappycia is not freedom of utterance 
so much as resolute confidence (cp. on 3°). Our writer certainly 
includes prayer in this conception of approaching God, but it is 
prayer as the outcome of faith and hope. Seneca bids Lucilius 
pray boldly to God, if his prayers are for soundness of soul and 
body, not for any selfish and material end: ‘‘audacter deum 
roga; nihil illum de alieno rogaturus es” (Z/. x. 4). But even 
this is not the meaning of zappyoia here. The Roman argues 
that a man can only pray aloud and confidently if his desires are 
such as he is not ashamed to have others hear, whereas the 
majority of people “whisper basest of prayers to God.” Our 
author does not mean “ palam” by rappncia. 

Our approach (mpocepxopyefa: the verb in a sense of. 
applying to a court or authority, e.g. in OP. 1119° mpoonAGopev 
TH Kpatiory Bovdyn, BGU. 1022) is T@ Opova THs xdpitos, for grace 
is NOW enthroned (see 2%), For the phrase see Is 16° d:0p$w6n- 
cera per éA€ovs Opdvos. Our author (cp. Introd. p. xlvii), like 
those who shared the faith of apocalyptic as well as of rabbinic 
piety, regarded heaven as God’s royal presence and also as the 
oxnvyn where he was worshipped, an idea which dated from Is 
61! and Ps 29 (cp. Mechilta on Ex 151"), though he only alludes 
incidentally (127%) to the worship of God by the host of angels 
in the upper sanctuary. He is far from the pathetic cry of 
Azariah (Dn 3%8): &« éorw év TO Kaipd TovTw . . . ovdE TOTS TOU 
KapT@oa. évwmiov gov Kal evpety eXeos. He rather shares Philo’s 
feeling (de Exsecrat. 9) that ot dvacwlouévor can rely upon the 
compassionate character of God (évi wey émvetkeia Kal xpyorornre 
Tov TapaKaAdoupevov cvyyvwopnV mpd Tiwplas det TLHEvTos), though 
he regards this mercy as conditioned by the sacrifice of Jesus. 
The twofold object of the approach is (a2) AapBdvew €Xeos, which 
is used for the passive of éAe® (which is rare), and (4) xdpuw 
edptoxew xTA., an echo of the LXX phrase (e.g. Gn 68) eipioxew 
xapiv évavtiov Kupiov (rov Geov). In the writer’s text (A) of the 
LXX, Prov 8!" ran ot dé éué fyrovvres etpyoovor xdpiv.) Eis 
eUkatpov BonPeray recalls rots meipalopevors BonOjoar in 218; it 
signifies ‘‘for assistance in the hour of need.” Evxaipos means 
literally “‘seasonable,” as in Ps 1047? (dotvar trHv tpodny adrots 
evxaipov), ‘‘fitting” or “opportune” (Zp. Aristeas, 203, 236). 
The “sympathy” of Jesus is shown by practical aid to the 
tempted, which is suitable to their situation, suitable above all 
because it is timely (evxapoyv being almost equivalent to év xaipa 

* Aristotle argues that xdpis or benevolence must be spontaneous and 
disinterested ; also, that its value is enhanced by neceSsitous circumstances 


(Zor on xdpus, Kael iw ) EXov Aéyerat xdpiv Vroupyety Seoudvy wh avril TwWOS, 
pnd’ wa re a’T@ TH vrovpyodvrt adn Wy’ éxelvyp Th: meyadn & ay 7 opddpa 


» 


deouevy, 7} peyahwv kal xaher@yv, } év Katpots Tovourots, 7) udvos } wpGros 7 
waduora, Red, ii. 7. 2), 


IV. 16-V. 1.] JESUS AS PRIEST 61 


xpetas, Sir 8°). Philo (de sacrificantibus, 10) shows how God, for all 
his greatness, cherishes compassion (€Acov kat otkrov AapBave Tov ev 
éevdeiais aropwratwv) for needy folk, especially for poor proselytes, 
who, in their devotion to him, are rewarded by his help (xapzév 
ctipapevor THS ert Tov Gedv Katadvyys THY amr avtod Bonbaav). But 
the best illustration of the phrase is in Aristides, Eis rov Sdapamw 
50: a yap Oy was tTUs év wavTt Kaip@ BonOov Karci, Sapam. 

How widely even good cursives may be found supporting a wrong reading 
is shown by the evidence for mpocepxduceda: 6. 38. 88. 104. 177. 206%. 241. 
255. 263. 337. 378. 383. 440. 462. 467. 487. 489. 623. 635. 639. 642. O15. 
919. 920. 927. 1149. 1245. 1288. 1518. 1836. 1852. 1872. 1891. 2004. For 
eos (the Hellenistic neuter, cp. Cronert’s Memoria Graeca Herculanensts, 
1761), the Attic é\eov (€\eos, masc.) is substituted by L and a few minuscules 
(Chrys. Theodoret). Bom. etpwyev. 


He now (5!-!°) for the first time begins to explain the qualifi- 
cations of the true dpyvepevs. 


(a) First, he must be humane as well as human : 

1 Ruery highpriest who ts selected from men and appointed to act on behalf 
of men in things divine, offering gifts and sacrifices for stn, * can deal gently 
with those who err through tgnorance, since he himself ts beset with weakness — 
8 which obliges him to present offerings for his own sins as well as for those of 
the People. 

(4) Second, he must not be self-appointed. 

4 Also, tt ts an office which no one elects to take for himself ; he ts called to 
it by God, just as Aaron was. 

The writer now proceeds to apply these two conditions to Jesus, but he 
takes them in reverse order, beginning with (4). 

5 Similarly Christ was not ratsed to the glory of the priesthood by himself, 
but by Him who declared to him, 

** Thou art my son, 
to-day have I become thy father.” 

8 Just as elsewhere (év érépy, sc. Tomy) he says, 

“* Thou art a priest for ever, with the rank of Melchizedek,”’ 

He then goes back to (a): 

7 In the days of his flesh, with bitter cries and tears, he offered prayers 
and supplications to Him who was able to save him from death ; and he was 
heard, because of his godly fear. *® Thus, Son though he was, he learned by 
(ag? Gv=dmd tovrwv &) all he suffered how to obey, ® and by being thus perfected 
he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him, ™ being desig- 
nated by God highpriest ‘‘ with the rank of Melchizedek.” 


Mas yap dpxrepeds (dealing only with Hebrew highpriests, 
and only with what is said of them in the LXX) é& év@pd7wy 
apPavdpevos (Nu 8° AdBe Trois Aeveiras ék pécov vidv *Iopayd) 
xabioratat—passive, in the light of 778 (6 voxos yap avOparous 
kabiotnow dpxepets €xovtas doGéverav) and of the Philonic usage 
(e.g. de vit. Mosts, ii. 11, TO wéAXovTe Gpyxrepet Kabioracba). The 
middle may indeed be used transitively, as, e.g., in Eurip. Supplic. 
522 (7dAepov S€ TovTov ovK éyw Kabiorapat), and is so taken here 
by some (e.g. Calvin, Kypke). But ra apds rov Oedv is an 
adverbial accusative as in 21’, not the object of xa@iorara: in an 
active sense. In 8wpd te kal Qucias, here as in 8° and 9%, the 


62 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS [v. 1, 2. 


writer goes back to the LXX (A) rendering of 1 K 8% (xai 7d 
Sépov Kat Tas Ovoias). The phrase recurs in £f. Aristeas, 234 (ov 
Sépots obd€ Ovotas), and is a generic term for sacrifices or offer- 
ings, without any distinction. The early omission of re (B D> 
K Lat boh pesh) was due to the idea that @voias should be 
closely connected with épaptudy (Ef ut offerat dona, et sacrificia pro 
peccatis,” vg). Instead of writing «is ro mpoo pepewy, our author 
departs from his favourite construction of eis with the infinitive 
and writes iva mpoopépy, in order to introduce pertpromabeiv 
Suvdpevos. This, although a participial clause, contains the lead- 
ing idea of the sentence. The dpyvepeds is able to deal gently 
with the erring People whom he represents, since he shares 
their do0évera, their common infirmity or liability to temptation. — 
MetptomraQety in v.? is a term coined by ethical philosophy. 
It is used by Philo to describe the mean between extravagant 
grief and stoic apathy, in the case of Abraham’s sorrow for the 
death of his wife (76 d pecov mpd Tov akpwv EXdmevov petprorabety, 
De Abrah. 44); so Plutarch (Consol. ad Apoll. 22) speaks of rips 
Kata pvow év Towovrois peTplowabeias. But here it denotes 
gentleness and forbearance, the moderation of anger in a person 
who is provoked and indignant—as in Plut. de Cohib. ira, 10, 
dvacTnocat d€ Kal oHoat, Kal deicacbar Kal KapTepnoal, TpadTyTOs 
€or. kal ouyyvwuns Kal perptorafeias. Josephus (Anzé. xii. 3. 2) 
praises this quality in Vespasian and Titus (erpiorabyodvtwv), 
who acted magnanimously and generously towards the unruly 
Jews; Dionysius Halicarnassus accuses Marcius (Azz. 8. 529) 
of lacking 10 evdiaAAaKtov Kat perpiorabeés, drdte du dpyns TO 
yévoiro, Andsoon. The term is allied to zpadrys. The sins 
of others are apt to irritate us, either because they are repeated 
or because they are flagrant; they excite emotions of disgust, 
impatience, and exasperation, ‘and tempt us to be hard and harsh 
(Gal 61). The thought of excess here is excessive severity rather 
than excessive leniency. ‘The objects of this petptomafety are 
Tois &yvoodow Kal TAavwpEvots, Z.¢€., people who sin through yield- 
ing to the weaknesses of human nature. For such offenders 
alone the piacula of atonement-day (which the writer has i in mind) 
availed. Those who sinned ékouciws (107°), not dxovoiws, were 
without the pale; for such presumptuous sins, which our writer 
regards specially under the category of deliberate apostasy (3! 
10”6), there is no pardon possible. The phrase here is practi- 
cally a hendiadys, for rots é€ dyvolas tAavwpévors: the People err 
through their adyvou. Thus dyvoety becomes an equivalent for 
dpaprave (Sir 23” etc.), just as the noun dyvénua comes to 
imply sin (cp. 97 and Jth 57° «i péev éorw ayvonua ev 7d Aad TovTw 
Kal dpaptavover eis Tov Pedy airav, with Tebt. Pap. 1244 (118 B.c.) 
and 5°—a proclamation by king Euergetes and queen Cleopatra 


V. 2-5. ] JESUS AS PRIEST 63 
declaring ‘“‘an amnesty to all their subjects for all errors, crimes,” 
etc., except wilful murder and sacrilege). In the AMZartyr. Pauli, 
4, the apostle addresses his pagan audience as advdpes of dvtes ev 
TH ayvwcia Kal TH wavy Tavry. 

(a) Strictly speaking, only such sins could be pardoned (Lv 4? 57}: >", 
Nu 1577*!, Dt 17!*) as were unintentional. Wilful sins were not covered by 
the ordinary ritual of sacrifice (1076, cp. Nu 12). 

(4) The term wrep{xetpat only occurs in the LXX in Ep. Jer. 23. 57 and 
in 4 Mac 12° (rd deouad mepixeluevov), and in both places in its literal sense 
(Symm. Is 611°), as in Ac 28%. But Seneca says of the body, ‘‘ hoc quoque 
natura ut quemdam vestem animo circumdedit” (Z/zs¢. 92), and the meta- 
phorical sense is as old as Theocritus (231% 14 gedye & dad xpos UBpw ras 
épyas mepixelwevos). 

The dpxvepeds, therefore (v.°), requires to offer sacrifice for 
his own sins as well as for those of the People, cams wept tod 
aod otw Kal mepi éautod. This twofold sacrifice is recognized 
by Philo (de vit. AZosis, 11. 1), who notes that the holder of the 
tepwovvn must ért redelors tepots beseech God for blessing 
avT@ Te Kal THs dpxouevors, The regulations for atonement-day 
(Lv 1617) provided that the dpyepevs sacrificed for himself and 
his household as well as for the People (kal rpoodée. ’Aapav tov 
pOcxXov TOV TEpl THS GpapTias aitod Kal efiAdoerar Tept avrod Kai 
TOU OiKOV avTOD . . . Kal TEpl TaoYS TLVaywyys vidv IopayA). But 
our author now turns from the idea of the solidarity between 
priest and People to the idea of the priest’s commission from 
God. Thv tyyy (in v.4) means position or office, as often, eg. 
éritporos Aap Bava Tavryv THv Tyuyy (t.e. Of supervising the house- 
hold slaves), Arist. Pol. 1. 7, typas yap Aéyomev etvar Tas apyas, tb. 
ili. Io, wept TOV apytepewv Os T HpSavtTo kal tiow éfeote THs TYAS 
ravTns petaAapBavew, Joseph. Ant. xx. 10. I. "ANNA (sc. Aap- 
Bave) kadovpevos, but takes it when (or, as) he is called. The 
terseness of the phrase led to the alteration (C® L) of dAAa@ into 
ddd’ 6 (as in v.>). Kaddomep cat “Aapdv. In Josephus (Azz. iii. 
8. 1), Moses tells the Israelites, viv & airds 6 Oeds ’Aapdva tis 
TLLHS TaUTNS akLov ExplvEe Kal TOUTOV TpyTat Lepéa. 

aepl (before apapti@v in v.%) has been changed to Uzep in C* D¢ K L etc, 
(conforming to 51). There is no difference in meaning (cp. mepl, Mt 26%= 
trep, Mk. and Lk.), for epi (see 10% 8 18 96 7311) has taken over the sense 


of izrep. 
For xaOdorep (x* A B D* 33) in v.4, x° DOK LP WY 6. 1288. 1739 read 
the more obvious xa@daep (C ? syr>*! Chrys. Cyr. Alex. Procopius: xa@ws). 


In v.5 odx éautév €ddfacev, while the term dda was specially 
applicable to the highpriestly office (cf. 2 Mac 147 d0ev adedd- 
pevos THY Tpoyovikny ddgav, A€yw 57) THY apxLepwovvyv), the phrase 
is quite general, as in the parallel Jn 8°4 The following yevy- 
Ojvar is an epexegetic infinitive, which recurs in the Lucan 
writings (Lk 15472, Ac 151°) and in the earlier Psalter of Solo- 


64 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS [V. 5-7. 


mon (27840 etc.). After &\X’ we must supply some words like 
autTov éddgacev. 

The argument runs thus: We have a great dpxtepeiis, Jesus 
the Son of God (41), and it is as he is Son that he carries out 
the vocation of dpyepev’s. There is something vital, for the 
writer’s mind, in the connexion of d&pyepevs and Yiés. Hence he 
quotes (v.5) his favourite text from Ps 2’ before the more apposite 
one (in v.®) from Ps 110‘, implying that the position of divine 
Son carried with it, in some sense, the role of dpxiepeds. This 
had been already suggested in 13 where the activities of the 
Son include the purification of men from their sins. Here the 
second quotation only mentions iepevs, it is true; but the writer 
drew no sharp distinction between tepeds and dpyxepevs. In 
Kata THs Tag Medxuoedéx, taéis for the writer, as 7!° proves 
(kata THY dpororyTa MeAxiedex), has a general meaning ;? Jesus 
has the rank of a Melchizedek, he is a priest of the Melchizedek 
sort or order, though in the strict sense of the term there was no 
Taéis or succession “of Melchizedek priests. 


Tdfis in the papyri is often a list or register ; in OP. 12664 (A.D. 98) 
év rage. means ‘‘in the class” (of people). It had acquired a sacerdotal 
nuance, ¢.g. Michel 735!*°* (the regulations of Antiochus I.), doris Tre av 
votépur xpovun taéiv AdBy Tavryv, and occasionally denoted a post or office 
(ez¢,.hebt.)P'297°, A:D. 123); 


"Os «tA. Some editors (eg. A. B. Davidson, Liinemann, 
Peake, Hollmann) take vv.7!° as a further proof of (4). But 
the writer is here casting back to (a), not hinting that the 
trying experiences of Jesus on earth proved that his vocation was 
not self-sought, but using these to illustrate the thoroughness 
with which he had identified himself with men. He does this, 
although the parallel naturally broke down at one point. Indeed 
his conception of Christ was too large for the categories he had 
been employing, and this accounts for the tone and language of 
the passage. (a) Jesus being xwpis duaptias did not require to 
offer any sacrifices on his own behalf; and (4) the case of 
Melchizedek offered no suggestion of suffering as a vital element 
in the vocation of an dpxepevs. As for the former point, while 
the writer uses mpocevéyxas in speaking of the prayers of Jesus, 
this is at most a subconscious echo of zpoodépe in vy.t3 ; there 
is no equivalent in Jesus to the sacrifice offered by the OT 
apyxvepevs, Tept EavTod . . . Tept Guaptiov. The writer starts with 
his parallel, for €v rats 1épars THs GapKos adrov corresponds to 
mepixeitar doGeverav (v.2); but instead of developing the idea of 
sympathy in an Official (werproradety Suvdpevos xrXr.), he passes to 
the deeper idea that Jesus qualified himself by a moral discipline 


1As in 2 Mac 938 émricrodhy éxovocay ixernplas rdiw, Ep. Arist. 69, 
Kpnmtdos éxovea Taku. 


can 


Vi47.| THE SUFFERINGS OF JESUS \65 


to be dpxvepevs in a pre-eminent sense. He mentions the prayers 
and tears of Jesus here, as the faith of Jesus in 2!%, for the 
express purpose of showing how truly he shared the lot of man 
on earth, using Sejoets Te Kal ikernpias, a phrase which the writer 
may have found in his text (A) of Jb 407 @ dejoes Kai ixerypias, 
but which was classical (e.g. Isokrates, de Pace, 46, modAas 
ixerypias Kat denoes rovovpevor). “Ixernpia had become an equiva- 
lent for ixeota, which is actually the reading here in 1 (denoas Te 
kal txecias). The phrase recurs in a Ptolemaic papyrus (Brunet 
de Presle et E. Egger’s Papyrus Grecs du Musée du Louvre, 277°), 
xalpev oe G€id peta Seyoews Kai tixerecas, though in a weakened 
sense. The addition of petad xpauyfs (here a cry of anguish) 
isxupas Kat Saxptwv may be a touch of pathos, due to his own 
imagination,! or suggested by the phraseology of the 22nd psalm, 
which was a messianic prediction for him (cp. above, 2}*) as for 
the early church; the words of v.® in that psalm would hardly 
suit (kexpagoyar yyéepas mpos oe Kal ovK« eicaxovon), but phrases 
like that of v.° (zpos oé éxéxpagav Kat éowOnoav) and v.* (év ra 
Kekpayeval pe TpOs aiTov éryjKoveév pov) might have been in his 
mind. Tears were added before long to the Lucan account of 
the passion, at 224 (Epiph. Azcor. 31, dAAG “Kai exAavoev” KEiTaL 
év tT kata Aovkay evayyediw év Tois ddvopfwrors avtvypadors). It 
is one of the passages which prove how deeply the writer was 


‘impressed by the historical Jesus ; the intense faith and courage 


and pitifulness of Jesus must have deeply moved his mind. He 
seeks to bring out the full significance of this for the saving 
work of Jesus as Son. His methods of proof may be remote and 
artificial, to our taste, but the religious interest which prompted 
them is fundamental. No theoretical reflection on the qualifica- 
tion of priests or upon the dogma of messiah’s sinlessness could 


have produced such passages as this. 


Later Rabbinic piety laid stress on tears, ¢.g. in Sohar Exod. fol. 5. 19, 
** Rabbi Jehuda said, all things of this world depend on penitence and 
prayers, which men offer to God (Blessed be He!), especially if one sheds 
tears along with his prayers”; and in Synopsis Sohar, p. 33, n. 2, ‘‘ There 
are three kinds of prayers, entreaty, crying, and tears. Entreaty is offered 
in a quiet voice, crying with a raised voice, but tears are higher than all.” 


In dmé tis edAaPelas, the sense of edAaBeia in 1278 and of 
evAaBetofar in 117 shows that dad here means “on account of” 
(as is common in Hellenistic Greek), and that dz rijs etAa Betas 
must be taken, as the Greek fathers took it, ‘on account of his 
reverent fear of God,” fro sua reverentia (vg), “because he had 


1 Like that of Hos 12‘, where tears are added to the primitive story (Gn 
326) of Jacob’s prayer (évicxvoev pera ayyédou Kal Aduvvdcbn* éxavoay Kal 
éde7jAnody ov). In 2 Mac 11° the Maccabean army pera ddupudy kal daxpiwv 
ixérevov Tov KUptov. 


5 


66 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS PWeuryta. 


God in reverence” (Tyndale; ‘fin honoure,” Coverdale). The 
writer is thinking of the moving tradition about Jesus in Geth- 
semane, which is now preserved in the synoptic gospels, where 
Jesus entreats God to be spared death: “ABBa 6 rarnp, rdvra 
dvwvaTd cou wapéveyKe TO moTHpLov amr éuov rovro (Mk 14%). This 
repeated supplication corresponds to the “ bitter tears and cries.” 
Then Jesus adds, aAX’ od ri éy® GerXw, GAAG ti ov. This is his 
evAa Bea, the godly fear which leaves everything to the will of 
God. Such is the discipline which issues in taxon. Compare 
Ps. Sol 68 kai xvpuos elonxovae mpocevyny mavTos év PoBw Geod. 

(a) The alternative sense of ‘‘ fear” appears as early as the Old Latin 
version (d=exauditus a metu). This meaning of evAaBela (Beza: ‘‘ liberatus 
ex metu”’) occurs in Joseph. Amt. xi. 6. 9, evAaBelas abri (Esther) drodvwr. 
Indeed evAaBela (cp. Anz, 359) and its verb evAaBeto@ar are common in this 
sense; cp. ¢.g. 2 Mac 816 uh xaramdayivat rots deculors unde evraBetoOar 
Thy... wodrutAnbelav: Sir 41° wh evrAaBod kptua davdrov: Wis 178 odrot 
KarayéAacrov evhdBeray évdcovv, But here the deeper, religious sense is more 
relevant to the context. ‘‘ In any case the answer consisted . . . in courage 
given to face death. . . . The point to be emphasized is, not so much that 
the prayer of Jesus was heard, as that it eeded to be heard” (A. B. Bruce, 
p. 186). . 

(4) Some (e.g. Linden in Studien und Kritiken, 1860, 753 f., and Blass, 
§ 211) take dé rijs evAaBelas with what follows ; this was the interpretation of 
the Peshitto (‘‘ and, although he was a son, he learned obedience from fear 
and the sufferings which he bore”’). But the separation of did rijs evAaBelas 
from ag Gv and the necessity of introducing a xal before the latter phrase 
point to the artificiality of this construction. 


In v.° katwep @y vids (xkaizep being used with a participle as 
in 75 1217) means, “Son though he was,” not “son though he 
was.” The writer knows that painful discipline is to be expected 
by all who are sons of God the Father; he points out, in 125f, 
that every son, because he is a son, has to suffer. Here the 
remarkable thing is that Jesus had to suffer, not because but 
although he was vids, which shows that Jesus is Son in a unique 

f sense; as applied to Jesus vids means something special. As 
divine vids in the sense of 11, it might have been expected that 
he would be exempt from such a discipline. “Os... éuaev 
. . . bmakoyy is the main thread of the sentence, but kaiwep dv 
vids attaches itself to é€ua0ev «rd. rather than to the preceding 
participles mpogvevéyxas and eicaxouvobeis (Chrys. Theophyl.). 
With a daring stroke the author adds, €uabev ad’ dv émabe thy 
Staxonv. The paronomasia goes back to a common Greek 
phrase which is as old as Aeschylus (A4gam. 177f.), who de- 


scribes Zeus as tov wdde pddos Oévta xupiws éxew, and tells how 
(W. Headlam)— 


“The heart in time of sleep renews 
Aching remembrance of her bruise, 
And chastening wisdom enters wills that most refuse ”— 


V. 8, 9.] THE OBEDIENCE OF JESUS \67 


which, the poet adds, is a sort of ydpis Biawos from the gods. 
This moral doctrine, that waos brings pafos, is echoed by 
Pindar (Jsthim. 1. 40, 6 movyjcas b€ vow Kat mpopdGeav pépet) and 
other writers, notably by Philo (de vit. Mos. lil. 38, rovrous ov 
Adyos aX’ épya maioever’ mabovres elovT au 70 ewov dipevdes, érrel 
padovtes ovk éyvwoav: de spec. leg. ili. 6, ty €xk Tov mabey paby 
KTA.: de somn. il. 15, 0 wabav axpiBas ahaa 6tt Tov Geod (Gn 
501%) éorw). But in the Greek authors and in Philo it is almost 
invariably applied to ‘‘ the thoughtless or stupid, and to open and 
deliberate offenders” (Abbott, Dzat. 32082), to people who can 
only be taught by suffering. Our writer ventures, therefore, to 
apply to the sinless Jesus an idea which mainly referred to young 
or wilful or undisciplined natures. The term 6iraxoy only occurs 
once in the LXX, at 2 S 22°6 (kai traxon cov érAnbuvey pe, A), 
where it translates may. The general idea corresponds to that 


of 105 below, where Jesus enters the world submissively to do 
the will of God, a vocation which involved suffering and self- 
sacrifice. But the closest parallel is the argument of Paul in Ph 
2°8, that Jesus, born in human form, éramretvwoev éavtov yevopevos 
imykoos (sc. TH GEG) wéxpt Gavarov, and the conception of the 
traxoy of Jesus (Ro 51%”) in contrast to the zapaxoy of Adam. 
What our writer means to bring out here, as in 2!f, is the 
practical initiation of Jesus into his vocation for God and men. 
‘Wherever there is a vocation, growth and process are inevi- 


table. . . . Personal relations are of necessity relations into which 
one grows ; the relation can be fully and practically constituted | 


only in the practical exercise of the calling in which it is involved. | 
So it was with Christ. He had, so to speak, to work Himself | 
into His place in the plan of salvation, to go down among the 
brethren whom He was to lead to glory and fully to identify 
Himself with them, not of course by sharing their individual 
vocation, but in the practice of obedience in the far harder 
vocation given to Him. That obedience had to be learned, not 
because His will was not at every moment perfect ... but 
simply because it was a concrete, many-sided obedience” (W. 
Robertson Smith, Zxpositor*, ii. pp. 425, 426). TedewwOets in v.® 
recalls and expands the remark of 2! that God “ perfected” 
Jesus by suffering as tov dpynyov tis owrypias airav, and the 
argument of 217-18 The writer avoids the technical Stoic terms 
mpoxorrev and mpoxo7y. He prefers treAecovy and reAeiwors, not 
on account of their associations with the sacerdotal consecration 
of the OT ritual, but in order to suggest the moral_ri 
which enabled Jesus to offer a perfect self- sacrifice, and also 
perhaps with a side-allusion here to the death-association of 
these terms. 


a 


68 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS [V. 9-11. 


Philo (de Abrah, 11) observes that nature, instruction, and practice are the 
three things essential mpds TedevdryTa Tot Brod, ovre yap didacKadlay dvev 
dicews } doxhoews TercLwOjvat Suvvarov ore piots él wépas doriv éNOeiv ikavy 
diya Tov wabetv. 


Aittos cwtyplas was a common Greek phrase. Thus Philo 
speaks of the brazen serpent as airios cwrypias yevouevos TavTehovs 
trois Oeacapevors (de Agric. 22), Aeschines (2x Ctesiph. 57) has 
THs pev guTyplav TH TOE TOvS Heovs aitiovs yeyevyevous, and in 
the de Mundo, 3984, the writer declares that it is fitting for God 
airiov te yiveoOar Tots ert THS ys TwTypias. LwTypia aiwvios is 
a LXX phrase (Is 451”), but not in the sense intended here 
(cp. 28). The collocation of Jesus learning how to obey God 
and of thus proving a saviour tots dmakovouvow abt is remarkable. 
At first sight there is a clue to the sense in Philo, who declares 
that ‘the man who is morally earnest,” receiving God’s kingdom, 
‘does not prove a source of evil to anyone (atrios yiverat), but 
proves a source of the acquisition and use of good things for all 
who obey him” (waou rots tryxdots, de Abrah. 45). This refers 
to Abraham, but to the incident of Gn 23%, not to that of 
Melchizedek ; Philo is spiritualizing the idea of the good man as 
king, and the trnxoo are the members of his household under 
his authority. The parallel is merely verbal. Here by taow 
tois bTakovougw adt the writer means of mictevioavres (4°), but 
with a special reference to their loyalty to Christ. Disobedience 
to Christ or to God (338 4% 1!) is the practical expression of 
disbelief. It is a refusal to take Christ for what he is, as God’s 
appointed dpxvepeds. The writer then adds (v.!°) mpocayopeubets 
bd Tod Oeod dpxiepeds Kata Thy Taf Medxtoedéx, in order to 
explain how, thus commissioned, he brought the cwrypia aiwvios. 
The paragraph is thus rounded off, like that of vv.>°® with a 
reference to the Melchizedek priesthood, which the writer regards 
as of profound importance, and to which he now proposes to 
advance. Though zpocayopevw is not used in this sense (“ hail,” 
“‘designate”) in the LXX, the usage is common in Hellenistic 
writings like 2 Maccabees (1° 47 10%) and Josephus (eg. « 
Apion. i. 311). But the Melchizedek type of priesthood is not 
discussed till 62° 71%, The interlude between 51° and 6° is 
devoted to a stirring exhortation ; for this interpretation of the 
Son as priest is a piece of yv@o.s which can only be imparted 
to those who have mastered the elementary truths of the Chris- 
tian religion, and the writer feels and fears that his readers are 
still so immature that they may be unable or unwilling to grasp 
the higher and fuller teaching about Christ. The admonition 
has three movements of thought, 511-14, 61-8, and 6919, 


1l On this point I (hutv, plural of authorship, as 2°) have a great deal to say, 
which it ts hard to make intelligible to you. or (kal yap=etenim) you have 


V. 11, 12.] BACKWARDNESS 69 


grown dull of hearing. ™ Though by this time you should be teaching other 
people, you still need someone to teach you once more the rudimentary prin- 
ciples of the divine revelation. You are in need of milk, not of solid food. 
13 (For anyone who ts fed on milk ts unskilled in moral truth ; he ts) a mere 
babe. 14 Whereas solid food zs for the mature, for those who have their 
Jaculttes trained by exercise to distinguish good and evil.) 61 Let us pass on 
then to what 7s mature, leaving elementary Christian doctrine behind, instead 
of laying the foundation over again with repentance from dead works, with 
faith in God, * with instruction about ablutions and the laying on of hands, 
about the resurrection of the dead and eternal punishment. * With God's 
permission we will take this step. 


Mept 08 (Ze. on apxiepeds Kata THV Tagéw M.) Todds KTA. (v.12), 
The entire paragraph (vv.!4-!*) is full of ideas and terms current 
in the ethical and especially the Stoic philosophy of the day. 
Thus, to begin with, zodvs (sc. ore) 6 Ndyos iS a Common literary 
phrase for ‘‘there is much to say”; e.g. Dion. Hal. ad Amm. 
i. 3, TOAVS yap 6 epi aitav Adyos, and Lysias 7% Pancleonem, 11, 
doa pev ovv advo. éppyOy, moAds av ein por Adyos SenyctoOat. 
IloAvs and dvcepynvevros are separated, as elsewhere adjectives 
are (e.g. 21”). For the general sense of Sucepyyveutos Néyew, see 
Philo, de migrat. Abrah, 18, 7s Ta pev GAXa paxpotépwv 7) Kata 
Tov mapovTa Katpov detrat Adywv Kal bepHereov, and Dion. Halic. 
de Comp. Vill. wept dv Kai modts 6 Adyos Kai Babeia 7 Oewpia. 
Avoeppjvevtos occurs In an obscure and interpolated passage of 
Philo’s de Somniis (i. 32, dXéxtw tue Kai dvoepunve’tw Oéa), and 
Artemidorus (Oxeirocr. ili. 67, ot Ovetpou . . . motkiror Kal zoAXots 
Sucepuynvevtor) uses it of dreams. “Emel xrA. (explaining duvcepyn- 
vevtot) for the fault lies with you, not with the subject. Nw@pds 
only occurs once in the LXX, and not in this sense (Pr 22” 
avipdor vwOpois, tr. FWM); even in Sir 4% 111? it means no more 
than slack or backward (as below in 61%). It is a common 
Greek ethical term for sluggishness, used with the accusative or 
the (locative) dative. With dxoy it denotes dulness. The literal 
sense occurs in Heliodorus (v. 10: éy® pev ov nobdunv... 
Taxa pév tov Kal dt HAtkiav vwOpdtepos dv tiv axojv' vooos yap 
dAAwy te kal dtav TO yHpas), and the metaphorical sense of dxoat 
is illustrated by Philo’s remark in guzs ver. div. haer. 3: év aidxots 
avdpiacw, ois Ota péev eortiv, axoat 0’ odk everow. 

Why (kai ydp, v.12), the writer continues, instead of being 
teachers you still need a teacher. For xpeta with the article and 
infinitive (tod 8i8dcoKxeww? xrA.), cp. the similar use of xpéwv in OP. 
1488%, In what follows, td, the masculine singular, gives a 
better sense than riva, the neuter plural. ‘‘ Ye again have need 
of (one) to teach you what are the elements” (sah boh); but it 


1 —* inserts dxujv (Mt 15)6) between ydp and éorw: ‘‘he is s¢z// a mere 
babe.” Blass adopts this, for reasons of rhythm. - 
2 1912 and Origen read (with 462) diddoxeo@ar, and omit vas. 


79 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS [V. 12. 


is the elementary truths themselves, not what they are, that need 
to be taught. Ta orotxeta here means the ABC or elementary 
principles (see Burton’s Ga/atians, pp. 510f.), such as he men- 
tions in 61:7, He defines them further as tis apxis tav Noyiwy 
Neos, where ta Aoyia Geod means not the OT but the divine 
revelation in general, so that ra o. t. dpyns corresponds to the 
Latin phrase “prima elementa.” The words é¢ethovtes elvar 
SuddoKadou simply charge the readers with backwardness. ‘The 
expression, ‘to be teachers,’ affirms no more than that the 
readers ought to be ripe in Christian knowledge. Once a man 
is ripe or mature, the qualification for teaching is present ” 
(Wrede, p. 32). The use of the phrase in Greek proves that it 
is a general expression for stirring people up to acquaint them- 
selves with what should be familiar. See Epict. 2nchir. 51, 
motov oby ért OuddoKadov mpoodokas; ... OvK Ere ef peipaxtov, GAAG 
avnp non téAeos. It was quite a favourite ethical maxim in 
antiquity. ‘Thus Cyrus tells the Persian chiefs that he would be 
ashamed to give them advice on the eve of battle: ofda yap tpas 
TavTa émioTapevous Kal peweAeTnKOTas Kal doKodytas Oa TéAoUS 
oldmep éyw, wate Kav aArAous cikdTws Gv dSidacKorre (Cyrop. iii. 3. 
35). Similarly we have the remark of Aristophanes in Plato, 
Sympos. 1894, éy® ov reipdcopar duty elonynoacbar tiv dvvopw 
airov, tuets O€ TOV GAAwY diddoKador évecbe, and the reply given 
by Apollonius of Tyana to a person who asked why he never put 
questions to anybody: 6re petpaxioy dv eLytnca, viv dé ov xp77 
fnrety aAAd diddoKxev & evpynxa (Philostratus, Vita Apoll. i. 17). 
Seneca tells Lucilius the same truth: ‘‘ quousque disces ? iam et 
praecipe (Z/. 33°). Thus the phrase here offers no support 
whatever to any theories about the readers of Lpdos “EBpaious 
being a group of teachers, or a small, specially cultured com- 
munity. The author, himself a duddcxados, as he is in possession 
of this mature yvéovs, is trying to shame his friends out of their 
imperfect grasp of their religion. That is all. Teyévate xpetay 
éxovtes is a rhetorical variant for ypefay éyere, due to the writer’s 
fondness for yeyova. If there is any special meaning in the 
larger phrase, it is that detected by Chrysostom, who argues that 
the writer chose it deliberately: rouvrécrw, duets nOeAncare, tpets 
€avtovs eis ToUTO KaTeaTHGaTE, eis TaTHV THY xpeiav. They are 
responsible for this second childhood of theirs. The comparison } 
of milk and solid food is one of the most common in Greek 

1 Origen (PAz/ocalia, xviii. 23) uses this passage neatly to answer Celsus, 
who had declared that Christians were afraid to appeal to an educated and 
intelligent audience. He quotes 5! as well as 1 Co 3%%, arguing that in 
the light of them it must be admitted jets, don divauis, rdvra mpdrromev 
vmép Tod ppoviuwy avipay yevécOar Tov cvAAOYov NuGY* Kal TA ev Nuly uddoTa 
Kaa kal Oeia Tore TOAMGmev Ev Tots mpds TO Kowdv diardyos Pépeww els wécor, 
br ebropodmev cuverav axpoaTar, 


V. 12-14. ] IMMATURITY 71 


ethical philosophy, as in Epictetus, €.g. 11, 16. 39, ov OéAes 980 
as Ta Tratdia droyahaxrirOijvat kal amrecOat Tpopiys OTEPEWT EAs, 
and ili. 24. 9, ov dmroyadakticoyev 45n of’ éavrovs, and parti- 
cularly in Philo. A characteristic passage from the latter writer 
is the sentence in de agric. 2: éret dé vytio péev eott yada Tpody, 
tedelors O€ TA EK TUPOV TEupaTa, Kal Wuxns yaAakTwdes pev av 
cley tpopat Kara THY TaLduKyy HAtKiay TA THS éyKuKALov povotKs 
mpomraevpata, TéeActat O€ Kal avdpacww éeumpemeis ai da Ppovncews 
Kal cwppoctvys Kal ardons aperns bpnynoes. Our writer adopts 
the metaphor, as Paul had done (1 Co 3!:2), and adds a general 
aside (vv.}8- 14) in order to enforce his remonstrance. He does 
not use the term yvéots, and the plight of his friends is not due 
to the same causes as operated in the Corinthian church, but 
he evidently regards his interpretation of the priesthood of Christ 
as mature instruction, oteped tpopy. “O petéxwv yddaKtos is one 
whose only food (ueréxewv as in 1 Co 10!” etc.) is milk; dmetpos 
is “inexperienced,” and therefore “ unskilled,” in Adyou B:Kato- 
auvyns—an ethical phrase for what moderns would call “ moral 
truth,” almost as in Xen. Cyrop. 1. 6. 31, avnp didacKxados ta&v 
malowv, Os édldacKev Apa Tovs Tatdas THY OiKatocvvynv KTA., Or in M. 
Aurelius xi. 10, xii. 1. Thus, while 8txavoodvy here is not a 
religious term, the phrase means more than (a) “ incapable of 
talking correctly ” (Delitzsch, B. Weiss, von Soden), which is, no 
doubt, the mark of a vymos, but irrelevant in this connexion : 
or (4) “incapable of understanding normal speech,” such as 
grown-up people use (Riggenbach). Tedetwy 8€ «rd. (v.14), The 
clearest statement of what contemporary ethical teachers meant by 
réXeos as mature, is (cp. p. 70) in Epict. Lxchirid. 51, ‘how long 
(cis wotov ére xpovov) will you defer thinking of yourself as worthy 
of the very best ...? You have received the precepts you 
ought to accept, and have accepted them. Why then do you 
still wait for a teacher (d:ddc0xadov mpoodoxas), that you may put 
off amending yourself till he comes? You are a lad no longer, 
you are a full-grown man now (ovx éru ef pecpaxiov, dAAG avip 
non TéAeos). . . . Make up your mind, ere it is too late, to live 
ws TéAeLov Kal mpoxomTovTa.” Then he adds, in words that recall 
He 121f: “and when you meet anything stiff or sweet, glorious 
or inglorious, remember that viv 6 dywv Kat ydn mdpeott Tao 
"OdAvumia.” As Pythagoras divided his pupils into vim. and 
TéAevot, SO Our author distinguishes between the immature and 
the mature (cp. 1 Co 2° év rots reXelous, 3! vyriows). In 8a thy 
ééw (vg. “ pro consuetudine ”) he uses és much as does the writer 
of the prologue to Sirach (ixavyy €fw repuroinodpevos), for facility 
or practice. It is not an equivalent for mental faculties here, 


1 «* Firma quaedam facilitas quae apud Graecos &1s nominatur” (Quint. 
Insttt. Orat. 10. 1). 


72 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS [V. 14-VI. 1. 


but for the exercise of our powers. These powers-or faculties 
are called ra aioc@nthpia. AicPyryjprov was a Stoic term for an 
organ of the senses, and, like its English equivalent ‘‘ sense,” 
easily acquired an ethical significance, as in Jer 419 ra aic@nrypia 
Ts Kapodias pov. The phrase Yeyupvacpevo, aioOnripra may be 
illustrated from Galen (de dign. puls. lll, 2, Os pev yap av evaro Onro- 
TATOV puow TE Kal TO aio Onrnpov EXD YEYYEVAT HEVOV iKQVOS . 6 . 
oUTos av apiaTos ein yvdpwv TOV évTOs broKepevoy, and de complexu, 
ii. : AeXoyicpevov pev éotw avdpds Tos oyispors ods elpyKa Kal 
yeyvpvacpeva THV aicOnow év ToAA TH Kata pépos euzrerpia. KTA.), 
yeyupvacpeva being a perfect participle used predicatively, like 
meputevrevny in Lk 13°, and yeyupvacpéevoy above. Compare 
what Marcus Aurelius (iii. 1) says about old age; it may come 
upon us, bringing not physical failure, but a premature decay of 
the mental and moral faculties, e.g., of self-control, of the sense 
of duty, kai 60a To.atra Aoyopod ovyyeyupvacpéevov mavy xpylet. 
Elsewhere (il. 13) he declares that ignorance of moral distinctions 
(dyvova ayaav Kat kax@v) is a blindness as serious as any inability 
to distinguish black and white. The power of moral discrimina- 
tion (pds SudKptow Kadod Te kal kaxod) is the mark of maturity, 
in contrast to childhood (cp. eg. Dt 1°9 wav madiov véov datis 
ovK oldev o7jpepov ayabov 7 KaKkov). Compare the definition of 
TO HOiKov in Sextus Empiricus (Hyp. Pyrrh. ill. 168): Omep OoKet 
mept THY dudKplorw TOV Te KaAQV Kal KaKO@V Kat adiapdpwv KaTa- 
yiyveo bat. 

In spite of Resch’s arguments (7exte u. Untersuchungen, xxx. 3. 112f.), 
there is no reason to hear any echo of the well-known saying attributed to 


Jesus: yivecOe dé ddxiwoe Tparefirar, Ta mev amodoKkipagovres, Td Se Kaddv 
KaTéXovres. 


Avs—well then (as in 121% 28)—ént rév tededtyTa hepdpeba 
(61). It is a moral duty to grow up, and the duty involves an 
effort. The reAewrns in question is the mature mental grasp of 
the truth about Christ as dpyvepevs, a truth which the writer is 
disappointed that his friends still find it difficult to understand. 
However, 6:4 Tov xpovov they ought to understand it. He has every 
reason to expect an effort from them, and therefore he follows 
up his remonstrance with a word of encouragement. Instead of 
the sharp, severe tone of vv.!f, he now speaks more hopefully. 
The connexion is not easy. We expect “however” instead of 
“well then.” But the connexion is not made more easy by 
regarding 61 as a resolve of the writer: ‘‘since you are so im- 
mature, I am going on myself to develop the higher teaching.” 
It would be senseless for a teacher to take this line, and it is not 
facilitated by reading depouefa. The plural is not the literary 
plural as in 54. The writer wishes to carry his readers along 
with him. ‘‘If you want anyone to instruct you over again in 


VI. 1.] A CALL TO THOUGHT 73 


rudimentary Christianity, I am not the man; I propose to carry 
you forward into a higher course of lessons. Come, let us 
advance, you and I together.” The underlying thought, which 
explains the transition, is revealed in the next paragraph (vv.**), 
where the writer practically tells his readers that they must either 
advance or lose their present position of faith,! in which latter 
case there is no second chance for them. In spite of his un- 
qualified censure in 5!%, he shows, in 6%, that they are really 
capable of doing what he summons them to try in 61, ze. to 
think out the full significance of Jesus in relation to faith and 
forgiveness. Only thus, he argues, can quicken the faint pulse of 
your religious life. ‘‘ Religion is something different from mere 
strenuous thinking on the great religious questions. Yet it still 
remains true that faith and knowledge are inseparable, and that 
both grow stronger as they react on one another. More often 
than we know, the failure of religion, as a moral power, is due to 
no other cause than intellectual sloth” (E. F. Scott, p. 44). 
After the parenthesis of 51% 14, the writer resumes the thought 
with which he started in 51!* ‘‘you must make an effort to enter 
into this larger appreciation of what Christ means.” “Agevtes . 
pepapeda is a phrase illustrated by Eurip. Androm. 392- 303, 
THY apxiVv adets | xpos tHv TeXevTiV borépay ovcav depyn: by 
adevres the writer means “leaving behind,” and by depupeba 
“let us advance.” “Adinue might even mean ‘to omit” (“not 
mentioning”); it is so used with Adyoy (=to pass over without 
mentioning), ¢.g. in Plutarch’s az sent respublica gerenda sit, 18, 
GAN aerres, ci BovAe, TOV aGrooravta THs Todurelas AOyov éxelvo 
oKoTamev Oy KTA., and even independently (cp. Epict. iv. 1. 15, Tov 
pev Kaicapa mpos 76 mapov adomev, and Theophrastus, prooem., aes 
TO mpoorpidlea Oat Kal ToAA TEpt TOD TpaypLaros déyev). In what 
follows, tov THs dpxiis tod Xptotod Adyov is a variant for ra ororyeta 
THS apxns TOV Aoyiwy Tod Geod (512). Tod Xprorod is an objective 
genitive; the writer is not thinking of injunctions issued by 
Christ (so Harnack, Constitution and Law of the Church, p. 344). 
Blass follows L in reading Aouzrov after Aoyov—needlessly. 

The use of the 6enédtov metaphor after tis dpxfs was natural ; 
it occurs in Epictetus (il. 15. 8, od GéAes THY apynv oTjoat Kal TOV 
GeweAcov) and in Philo (de spec. leg. 11. 13, dpxnv tavtnv Baddo- 
pevos Womrep Oeyedvov tia). Indeed the OewéArcov metaphor is 
particularly common in Philo, as, e.g., in the de vita contempl. 
476 (é€yxpareay 5é dorep TWA GeweAtov mpoxataBarrdpuevor Wuy7s). 
This basis (OepéAvov) of Christian instruction is now described ; 
the contents are arranged in three pairs, but, as the middle pair 
are not distinctively Christian ideas (v.?), the writer puts in 


1 Compare the motto which Cromwell is said to have written on his 
pocket-bible, ‘‘ qui cessat esse melior cessat esse bonus.” 


74 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS [VI. 2. 


Si8axynv or Sidaxqs. The Oenédcov of instruction consists of 
petavolas . . . Kal miorews (genitives of quality), while ddaxny, 
which is in apposition to it (‘‘I mean, instruction about”), 
controls the other four genitives. Metdvora and mioris, Barticpot 
and ém@éots xeipOv, dvdotacis and xpipa aidvioy, are the funda- 
mental truths. Merdvoi! dro is like peravoety aad (Ac 8%), and 
miotis emt Gedy like micrevey eri (e.g. Wis 12? iva dradAayertes TIS 
Kakias TicTevowmev eri oé, KUpLe). These two requirements were 
foremost in the programme of the Christian mission. The other 
side of repentance is described in 9!* récw paAdAov 76 alpa Tot 
Xpirrov . . . KaGaptet tiv ovveidnow Hudv aro vexpdv Epywv eis TO 
ANatpevew Geo Cov, where the last word indicates that vexpa épya 
mean the conduct of those who are outside the real life and 
service of God. Practically, therefore, vexpa epya are sins, as the 
Greek fathers assumed; the man who wrote 11% (feov... | 
djaptias) would hardly have hesitated to call them such. He 
has coined this phrase to suggest that such ¢pya have no principle 
of life in them,? or that they lead to death. The origin of the 
phrase has not been explained, though Chrysostom and Oecu- 
menius were right in suggesting that the metaphor of 9!* was 
derived from the contamination incurred by touching a corpse 
(see Nu 191% 311%). Its exact meaning is less clear. The one 
thiug that is clear about it is that these éeya vexpa were not 
habitual sins of Christians ; they were moral offences from which 
a man had to break away, in order to become a Christian at all. 
They denote not the lifeless, formal ceremonies of Judaism, but 
occupations, interests, and pleasures, which lay within the sphere 
of moral death, where, as a contemporary Christian writer put it 
(Eph 2!), pagans lay vexpol tots wapartwpacw Kal Tals dpapriaus. 
The phrase might cover Jewish Christians, if there were any 
such in the community to which this homily is addressed, but it is 
a general phrase. Whatever is evil is vexpov, for our author, and 
épya vexpa render any Christian wioris or Aatpevery impossible 
(cp. Exposttor, Jan. 1918, pp. 1-18), because they belong to the 
profane, contaminating sphere of the world. 

In v.? 88axyv is read, instead of 8:8ax%s, by B syr™ and 
the Old Latin, a very small group—yet the reading is probably 


1 According to Philo (de Adbrah. 2, 3), next to hope, which is the d&pyn 
perovolas ayabGy, comes 7 él duapravopuévors werdvoia Kal BedXtlwots. Only, 
he adds (zdzd. 4), repentance is second to redevérys, Waorep Kal dvdcouv cuparos 
n mpds vyelay é& doGevelas weraBor\y . . . 1 8 amd Twos xpdvov Bedriwors tdiov 
ayabdov evpvods Wuxijs éore wh Tots wadixots émimevovons aN adporépos kal 
dvdpos dvTws ppovjuaciy émifnrovens evd.ov kardotacw [Wuxijs] kal TH pavracia 
Tav Kad@v émirpexovons. 

2 Cp. the use of vexpés in Epict. iii. 23. 28, xal why dv un radra éurog 6 
Tod pirocdpov Abyos, vexpds éoTt kal ards Kalo Aéywv. This passage indicates 
how vexpés could pass from the vivid application to persons (Mt 8”, Lk 15%, 
cp. Col 28), into a secondary application to their sphere and, conduct. 


VI. 2.] ELEMENTARY CHRISTIANITY 75 


original; the surrounding genitives led to its alteration into 
d.daxyns. However, it makes no difference to the sense, which 
reading is chosen. Even didayns depends on Oeuédtov as a 
qualifying genitive. But the change of didaxynv into didaxjs is 
much more likely than the reverse process. Avdaynv follows 
Barricpav like kécpos in 1 P 3° (évdvcews ipwatiwy Kdopos). 
Bamrticpot by itself does not mean specifically Christian baptism 
either in this epistle (9!°) or elsewhere (Mk 74), but ablutions or 
immersions such as the mystery religions and the Jewish cultus 
required for initiates, proselytes, and worshippers in general. 
The singular might mean Christian baptism (as in Col 2!2), but 
why does the writer employ the plural here? Not because 
in some primitive Christian circles the catechumen was thrice 
sprinkled or immersed in the name of the Trinity (Didache 71°), 
but because ancient religions, such as those familiar to the 
readers, had all manner of purification rites connected with 
water (see on 107%), The distinctively Christian uses of water 
had to be grasped by new adherents. ‘That is, at baptism, e.g., 
the catechumen would be specially instructed about the differ- 
ence between this Christian rite, with its symbolic purification 
from sins of which one repented, and (a) the similar rites in 
connexion with Jewish proselytes on their reception into the 
synagogue or with adherents who were initiated into various 
cults, and (4) the ablutions which were required from Christians 
in subsequent worship. ‘The latter practice may be alluded to 
in 1072 (AeAovopévor 76 THpa VoaTt Kafaps). Justin (Afol. i. 62) 
regards these lustrations of the cults as devilish caricatures of 
real baptism: kal 76 Aouvtpoy 41) TotTo aKxovoavTes ol Saipoves . . . 
evnpyyoav Kat pavrilew éavtods Tovs eis TA iepa aitov émiBaivovras 
Kal mpootevat avtois péeAAovras, AouBas Kal Kvioas amroreAodvTas 
teAXcov O€ Kai AoverOar emidvras mpiv éADeiv eri Ta tepd, evOa 
ispuvta, evepyovot. The émé@éors xerpdv which often followed 
baptism in primitive days (e.g. Ac 8!" 19°), though it is ignored 
by the Didache and Justin, was supposed to confer the holy 
Spirit (see v.4). Tertullian witnesses to the custom (de daptismo, 
18, de carnis resurrectione, 8), and Cyprian corroborates it (Zf. 
Ixxiv. 5, ‘‘manus baptizato imponitur ad accipiendum spiritum 
sanctum”). The rite was employed in blessing, in exorcising, 
and at ‘‘ordination,” afterwards at the reception of penitents 
and heretics; here it is mentioned in connexion with baptism 
particularly (2 REZ. vi. 4940). 

The subject is discussed in monographs like A. J. Mason’s 7he Relation 
of Confirmation to Baptism (1891), and J. Behm’s Die Handauflegung im 
Orchristenthum (1911). 

The final pair of doctrines is dvactdcews vexpay kal Kpipatos 
(21415 927) giwviou (as in Ac 24-25), Te is added after davac- 


76 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS _ [VI. 2-4. 


tacews mechanically (to conform with the preceding re) by 8 AC 
K L Lat arm syr™! Pe", just as it is added after Barticpov by 
harkl. In the rather elliptical style and loose construction of the 
whole sentence, ‘‘ notwithstanding its graceful rhythmical struc- 
ture,’ it is possible to see, with Bruce (p. 203), “an oratorical 
device to express a feeling of impatience” with people who need 
to have such g7iucipia mentioned. At any rate the writer hastens 
forward. VV. is not a parenthesis (“I will do this,” ze. go over 
such elementary truths with you, “if God permits,” when I 
reach you, 1373); the todro refers to the advance proposed in v.}, 
and after mowjoopev the author adds reverently, “if God permits,” 
édvirep é€mitpémy 6 eds, almost as a contemporary rhetorician — 
might say in a pious aside: éav dé odly 76 Sarpoviov nuas (Dion. 
Halicarn. De Admir. Vi dicendi in Dem. 58), or Ocdv pas 
prAratrovrwy dowels TE Kat avdcovs (De Composit. Verborum, 1). 
The papyri show that similar phrases were current in the 
correspondence of the day (cp. Deissmann’s Pib/e Studies, p. 80), 
and Josephus (47. xx. 11. 2) uses Kav TO Oelov émitper 7. 


woujcopev (8 BK LN 1. 2. 5. 6. 33. 69. 88, 216. 218. 221. 226, 242. 
255- 337- 429. 489. 919. 920. 1149. 1518. 1739. 1758. 4827. 1867. 2127. 2143. 
Lat sah boh Chrys.) has been changed into roujowuev by A C D P arm, etc., 
though the latter may have been originally, like gepdue@a in v.1, an ortho- 
graphical variant, o and w being frequently confused. 


4 For in the case of people who have been once enlightened, who tasted the 
heavenly Gift, who participated tn the holy Spirit, > who tasted the goodness of 
God’s word and the powers of the world to come, © and then fell away—zit is 
impossible to make them repent afresh, since they crucify the Son of God in 
their own persons and hold him up to obloguy. * For “‘land” which absorbs 
the rain that often falls on tt, and bears ‘‘ plants” that are useful to those for 
whom tt zs telled, recetves a blessing from God ; ® whereas, tf tt (sc. h yh) ‘‘ pro- 
duces thorns and thistles,” tt ¢s reprobate and on the verge of being cursed—its 
fate ts to be burned. 


Vv.*® put the reason for toéto toijoopey (v.3), and vv." 8 give 
the reason for éAdvatov . . . dvakxawwifew eis petdvoray (vv.4), 
"Adivatov ydp «TX. (v.*); there are four impossible things in the 
epistle: this and the three noted in wv.!8 10 and 116, Tots... 
aiavos (+ 5*) is a long description of people who have been 
initiated into Christianity; then comes the tragic kat mapatreu= 
évtas. What makes the latter so fatal is explained in (v.°) 
dvacTaupotvTas . . . TapaderypatiLovtas. Logically mddw dva- 
kawilew eis petdvoray ought to come immediately after &8dvatov 
yép, but the writer delayed the phrase in order to break up the 
sequence of participles. The passage is charged with an austerity 
which shows how seriously the writer took life. Seneca quotes 
(Zp. xxili. g-11) to Lucilius the saying of Epicurus, that “it is 
irksome always to be starting life over again,” and that “they live 
badly who are always beginning to live.” The reason is: “quia 


VI. 4.] A WARNING oy. 


semper illis imperfecta vita est.” But our writer takes a much 
more sombre view of the position of his friends. He urges 
them to develop their ideas of Christianity. ‘You need some 
one to teach you the rudimentary lessons of the faith all over 
again,” he had said. “Yes,” he now adds, “and in some cases 
that is impossible. Relaying a foundation of repentance, etc. ! 
That cannot be done for deliberate apostates.” The implication 
is that his readers are in danger of this sin, as indeed he has 
hinted already (in 37-4"), and that one of the things that is 
weakening them is their religious inability to realize the supreme 
significance of Jesus. To remain as they are is fatal; it means 
the possibility of a relapse altogether. ‘Come on,” the writer 
bids them, ‘‘for if you do not you will fall back, and to fall back 
is to be ruined.” The connexion between this passage and the 
foregoing, therefore, is that to rest content with their present 
elementary hold upon Christian truth is to have an inadequate 
grasp of it; the force of temptation is so strong that this rudi- 
mentary acquaintance with it will not prevent them from falling 
away altogether, and the one thing to ensure their religious 
position is to see the full meaning of what Jesus is and does. 
This meaning he is anxious to impart, not as an extra but as an 
essential. The situation is so serious, he implies, that only 
those who fully realize what Jesus means for forgiveness and 
fellowship will be abie to hold out. And once you relapse, he 
argues, once you let go your faith, it is fatal; people who de- 
liberately abandon their Christian confession of faith are beyond 
recovery. Such a view of apostasy as a heinous offence, which 
destroyed all hope of recovery, is characteristic of IIpdés ‘EBpaiovs. 
It was not confined to this writer. That certain persons could 
not repent of their sins was, ¢.g., an idea admitted in rabbinic 
Judaism. ‘Over and over again we have the saying: ‘For him 
who sins and causes others to sin no repentance is allowed or 
possible’ (Aboth v. 26; Sanhedrin, 1074). ‘He who is wholly 
given up to sin is unable to repent, and there is no forgiveness 
to him for ever’ (Midrash Tehillim on Ps 1 ad fin.).”1 There 
is a partial parallel to this passage in the idea thrown out by 
Philo in de agricultura, 28, as he comments upon Gn 9%; 
“Noah began to till the earth.” Evidently, says Philo, this 
means that he was merely working at the dpxav of the subject. 
’Apxy 8, 6 trv tadatdv Adyos, jue Tod TavTos, ds dv Hulce pos 
TO TéAos adeotyKvia, ov pi Tpooyevomevov kal TO dp~acbar 
moXXAakis peyara toAAod’s EBrAaWev. His point is that it 
is dangerous to stop short in any moral endeavour. But our 
author is more rigorous in his outlook. His warning is modified, 
however. (a) It is put in the form of a general statement. 
1C. G. Montefiore, in Jewish Quarterly Review (1904), p. 225. 


78 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS [VI. 4. 


(4) It contains a note of encouragement in v.’; and (c) it is at 
once followed up by an eager hope that the readers will dis- 
appoint their friend and teacher’s fear (v.°). In the later church 
this feature of IIpds “EBpaiovs entered into the ecclesiastical 
question of penance (cp. ZRL. ix. 716, and Journal of Theo- 
logical Studies, iv. 321 f.), and seriously affected the vogue of the 
epistle (cp. Introd. p. xx). 

The fourfold description of believers (* 5*) begins with drag 
gwtiobévras, where @wricPévras corresponds to AaPetv rHv ériy- 
vwow tHS GAnOeias (107°), in the general sense of LXX (eg. 
Ps 11818 4 dyAwos TOV Adywv Gov puwrtiet, Kal TuveTel vyTiovs), 
te. “enlightened” in the sense of having their eyes opened 
(Eph 18) to the Christian God. Subsequently, earlier even than © 
Justin Martyr, the verb, with its noun ¢dwriopds, came to be used 
of baptism specifically (cp. HARE. viii. 54, 55). “Amagé is pre- 
fixed, in contrast to mdduw (v.°); once for all men enter Christi- 
anity, it is an experience which, like their own death (9?7) and 
the death of Jesus (9”8), can never be repeated. In kadév yeuoa- 
pévous Geo pia (‘experienced how good the gospel is ”) the con- 
struction resembles that of Herod. vii. 46, where the active voice 
is used with the accusative (6 d¢ Oeds yAukdy yedoas Tov aidva, 
hbovepos év adt@ evpioxerar éwv), and the adj. is put first: ‘the 
deity, who let us taste the sweetness of life (or, that life is 
sweet), is found to be spiteful in so doing.” The similar use of 
the middle here as in Pr 29° and Jn 2° probably points to the 
same meaning (cp., however, Déat. 2016-2018), 7.¢., practically 
as if it were o7e «rd. (cp. Ps 348 yevoacGe xal idere Ore xpyoros 
6 xvptos, 1 P 23), in contrast to the more common construction 
with the genitive (v.* 2°). The writer uses genitive and accusa- 
tive indifferently, for the sake of literary variety ; and xadov here 
is the same as xaAov in 514, Teucapevous «rd. recalls the parti- 
ality of Philo for this metaphor (e.g. de Abrah. 19; de Somnitis, 
i, 26), but indeed it is common (cp. eg. Jos. Azz. iv. 6. 9, daa€ 
TO véov yevoapevov Levixdv CHicpav drdAyjotws attdv éveopeiro) 
throughout contemporary Hellenistic Greek as a metaphor for 
experiencing. Probably yevoapévous . . . éroupaviou, petdxous 

. dyiou, and kahdv yeuocapévous aidvos are three rhetorical 
expressions for the initial experience described in Gag dwtiobév- 
tas. ‘‘The heavenly Gift” (rs dwpeds rs érovpaviov) may be 
the Christian salvation in general, which is then viewed as the 
impartation of the holy Spirit, and finally as the revelation of the 
higher world which even already is partly realized in the experi- 
ence of faith. Note that dwrioGévras is followed by yevoapévous 
xtX., as the light-metaphor is followed by the food-metaphor 
in Philo’s (de fuga et invent. 25) remarks upon the manna 
(Ex 1615. 16); 4 Oeia cvvragis airy tiv Spatixny Woxnv huriler re 


VI. 5, 6.] NO SECOND REPENTANCE 79 


Kat Ou“ov Kat yAvKaiver . . . Tovs duwavTas Kal wewvavras Kado- 
kayabias epndivovoa. Also, that Suvdpers te péANovTos aidvos? in- 
cludes the thrilling experiences mentioned in 24. The dramatic 
turn comes in (v.°) kat mapameodvtas. Ilaparimrev is here used 
in its most sinister sense; it corresponds to droorjva (312), and 
indeed both verbs are used in the LXX to translate the same 
term 5yp. The usage in Wis 69 (i Tapatéoyte) 127 (rovs 
twapatimtoovtas) paves the way for this sense of a deliberate 
renunciation of the Christian God, which is equivalent to éxovaiws 
dpapravev in 10%, The sin against the holy Spirit, which Jesus 
regarded as unpardonable, the mysterious dpapria mpds Gavarov 
of 1 Jn 5!6, and this sin of apostasy, are on the same level. The 
writer never hints at what his friends might relapse into. 
Anything that ignored Christ was to him hopeless. 

*AdUvaTor (sc. €or) is now (v.®) taken up in dvaKxowifew (for 
which Paul prefers the form dvaxawotv), a LXX term (e.g. Ps 
51!*) which is actually used for the Christian start in life by 
Barnabas (6! dvaxawioas nuads év TH adéoer TOY dyapridy), and 
naturally of the divine action. Mddw is prefixed for emphasis, 
as in Isokr. Aveopag. 3, THs €xOpas THs pds Tov Baciréa wadw 
GVAKEKQLWLO LEVYS. 

There have been various, vain efforts to explain the apparent harshness of 
the statement. Erasmus took ddvvaroy (like d=difficile) as ‘‘ difficult” ; 
Grotius said it was impossible ‘‘ per legem Mosis’’; others take dvaxawlt{ew 
to mean ‘‘ keep on renewing,” while some, like Schoettgen, Bengel, and 
Wickham, fall back on the old view that while men could not, God might 
effect it. But even the last-named idea is out of the question. If the writer 
thought of any subject to dvaxawlfewv, it was probably a Christian d:ddoxados 
like himself; but the efforts of such a Christian are assumed to be the channel 
of the divine power, and no renewal could take place without God. There 
is not the faintest suggestion that a second repentance might be produced b 
God when human effort failed. The tenor of passages like 10% and 1217 
tells finally against this modification of the language. A similarly ominous 
tone is heard in Philo’s comment on Nu 30! in guod deter. pot. insid. 40: 
ghoouev Oidvoiay . . . EKBeBARTOa Kaltxnpav Oeod, iris H yovds Oelas ov 
mapedééaro 7) mapadetauévyn Exovolws adOis €EnuBdwoe .. . H 8 adrak Siatevx- 
Oeioa Kal Storxicbeioa ws domovdos wéxpt TOU mavrods aldvos éxrerdtevrat, els Tov 
dpxatov olkov éraveNOety ddvvaroica. 

The reason why a second repentance is impossible is given 
in dvactaupodytas . . . wapaderypartiLovtas, where dvacravpodvras 
is used instead of oravpotvras, for the sake of assonance (after 
dvaxawilev), but with the same meaning. *Avacravpoiv simply 
means “‘to crucify,” as, é.g., in Plato’s Gorgias, 28 (tots atrod émdav 

1 Tertullian’s translation, ‘‘ occidente iam aevo” (de Pudicitia, 20) shows 
that his Greek text had omitted a line by accident : 

NOYZ0YPHMAAYN 
AMEIZTEMEAA 
ONTOSAIWNOCKAI, 


t.e. Sur[duers te wédA]ovTos aldvos, 


80 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS [VI. 6. 


maioas TE Kal yuvaixka TO éxxXaTov dvacravpwO 7 KatamitTwOF) ; 
Thucyd. i. r10 (Ivdpws . . . rpodocia Anpbeis averravpwn) ; 
Josephus (Azz. xi. 6. 10, dvaoravpioa. tov Mapdoxator), etc. The 
dva =sursum, not rursum, though the Greek fathers (e.g. Chrys. 
rt b€ éorw dvactavpotvtas; avwlev rad otavportvtas), and several 
of the versions (e.g. vg ‘“‘rursum crucifigentes”), took it in the sense 
of re-crucify. ‘Eaurots: it is ‘key crucifixion of Jesus. “The 
thought is that of wilfulness rather than of detriment ” (Vaughan). 

In the story of Jesus and Peter at Rome, which Origen mentions as part 
of the Acts of Paul (27 Joh. xx. 12), the phrase, ‘‘to be crucified over again” 
occurs in a different sense (Zexte u. Unters. xxx. 3, pp. 271-272). Kalo 
KUptos avTw elev’ eloépxouce els THY ‘Padunv oravpwOivat. Kal 6 Hérpos elev 
av’rs* Kipie, waduv oravpotca; elev atr@* val, Ilérpe, madw oravpodua, 
Origen, quoting this as “Avw0ev wéA\w oravpodedar, holds that such is the 
meaning of dvacravpoty in He 6°, 


The meaning of the vivid phrase is that they put Jesus out 
of their life, they break off all connexion with him ; he is dead to 
them. ‘This is the decisive force of cravpotofa: in Gal 614. The 
writer adds an equally vivid touch in kat mapadserypatifovtas 
(= 7dv vidv Jeod Kataratjoas KTX., 10%)—as if he is not worth 
their loyalty! Their repudiation of him proclaims to the world 
that they consider him useless, and that the best thing they can 
do for themselves is to put him out of their life. NMapadery- 
patifew is used in its Hellenistic sense, which is represented by 
ridévar eis mapaderypa in the LXX (Nah 3°). Possibly the term 
was already associated with impaling (cp. Nu 25* rapaderypdricov 
avrovs Kvpiw),! but our author does not use it in the LXX sense 
of “make an example of” (by punishing) ; the idea is of exposing 
to contemptuous ignominy, in public (as in Mt 1%). 


The Bithynians who had renounced Christianity proved to Pliny their 
desertion by maligning Christ—one of the things which, as he observed, no 
real Christian would do (‘‘ quorum nihil posse cogi dicuntur qui sunt re vera 
Christiani”’). ‘‘Ommnes .. . Christi male dixerunt.’”” When the proconsul 
urges Polykarp to abandon Christianity, he tells the bishop, Aowddpnrov roy 
Xpiordv (Aart. Polyk. ix. 3). The language of Mpés ‘EBpatovs is echoed in 
the saying of Jesus quoted in Afost. Const, vi. 18: obrol elot wept dv Kal 6 
KUptos TiKpOs Kal droTéuws arepijvaro héywv Sri elol Wevddxpioroa Kal Wevdodu- 
ddoxara, of BLacdnunoavres TO wrvedua THs Xdpiros Kai dromrvcavrTes Thy wap 
avrod dwpeav wera THY xdpy, ols ovk aheOjoerat ode é€v TH aldu roUTWw ove év 
Tp médANovtt. In Sir 31° (Bamrifduevos awd vexpod cal madw arropevos avtod, 
rl @pednoev TH AovTpy avdrod ;) the allusion is to the taboo-law of Nu 191! 22; 
the parallel is verbal rather than real. But there is a true parallel in 
Mongolian Buddhism, which ranks five sins as certain ‘‘to be followed by a 
hell of intense sufferings, and that without cessation . . . patricide, matricide, 
killing a Doctor of Divinity (z.e. a lama), bleeding Buddha, sowing hatred 
among priests. . . . Drawing blood from the body of Buddha is a figurative 
expression, after the manner of He 6°” (J. Gilmour, Among the Mongols, 
Pp: 233, 234). 


1 In alluding to the gibbeting law of Dt 21%, Josephus (Be//. Jud. iv. 
5. 2) speaks of dvacraupotv. " 


VI. 6-8. | A PARABLE FROM NATURE 81 


In the little illustration (vv.7-8), which corresponds to what Jesus 
might have put in the form of a parable, there are reminiscences 
of the language about God’s curse upon the ground (Gn 3}”- 38) ; 
eTLKATAPATOS yn . . . akavOas kal tpiBdorovs avareAct, and also of 
the words in Gn 11? kat é&nveyxev ) yn Poravyy xdprov, though the 
writer uses éxdépew for dvareAAcy, and prefers tixrew to éxpépe 
(in v.’), The image of a plot or field is mentioned by Quintilian 
(Zustit. Orat. v. 11. 24) as a common instance of the rapafPoAy : 
‘fut, si animum dicas excolendum, similitudine utaris terrae quae 
neglecta spinas ac dumos, culta fructus creat.” The best Greek 
instance is in Euripides (Hecuba, 592 f.: ovKcovv devov, ei yn pev 
kakn | TvxXovCa Kaipod Oedbev ed ordxvv pépet, | xpyoTH 8 duaproic’ 
Ov xpeov avriy tvxety | Kaxdv didwor Kaprov KTA.). Modca of land, 
as, ¢.g., In Dt 1111 yy . . . €k Tov veTOD Tov Oipavod wieraL Vdwp: 
Is 551% etc. As etOetos generally takes eis with the accusative, it 
is possible that tixrouoa was meant to go with éxewots. Tewpyetrat, 
of land being worked or cultivated, is a common term in the papyri 
(e.g. Syl. 429° Ta Te ywpia ei yewpyetrar) as well as in the LXX. 

(a) Origen’s homiletical comment (PAzJocalia, xxi. 9) is, Ta yuvdueva bard Tob 
Ocot repdoria olovel verds éorww* ai dé mpoapécers ai dudgopoat olovel | yeyewpyn- 
pévn yh éorl kal ) Huernuevyn, mid TH Pioet ws yh TUyXdvovca—an idea similar 
to that of Jerome (¢ractatus de psalmo xcvt., Anecdota Maredsolana, ili. 3. 90: 
‘* apostolorum epistolae nostrae pluviae sunt spiritales. Quid enim dicit Paulus 
in epistola ad Hebraeos? Terra enim saepe venientem super se bibens imbrem, 
et reliqua”). (4) The Mishna directs that at the repetition of the second of the 
Eighteen Blessings the worshipper should think of the heavy rain and pray for 
it at the ninth Blessing (Berachoth, 51), evidently because the second declares, 
‘* Blessed art thou, O Lord, who restorest the dead” (rain quickening the earth), 
and the ninth runs, ‘‘ Bless to us, O Lord our God, this year and grant usa 
rich harvest and bring a blessing on our land.” Also, ‘‘ on the occasion of the 
rains and good news, one says, Blessed be He who is good and does good” 


(Berachoth, 9”). Cp. Marcus Aurelius, v. 7, evxH’A@nvalwy’ toov, door, & pire 
Zed, xara Tis dpovpas THs’ AOnvalwy kal Tov wediwy. 


MetadapBaver ( = participate in) is not a LXX term, but occurs 
in this sense in Wis 189 etc. ; edAoylas occurs again in 12!” (of Esau 
the apostate missing his evAoy/a), and there is a subtle suggestion 
here, that those alone who make use of their divine privileges are 
rewarded. What the writer has in mind is brought out in v.!; 
that he was thinking of the Esau-story here is shown by the 
reminiscence of dypod dv niAdynoev Kupios (Gn 2777), 

The reverse side of the picture is now shown (v.8). 


Commenting on Gn 3}8 Philo fancifully plays on the derivation of the word 
tplBodos (like ‘‘ trefoil”): Exacrov 6¢ rv raddy rpiBdria elpynxer, érerdh TpirTd 
éotw, até re Kal 7d mointikdv Kal Td €x ToUTwy dmorédecpa (leg. alleg. 3°). 
He also compares the eradication of evil desires in the soul to a gardener or 
farmer burning down weeds (de Agric. 4, wav7’ éxxdw, éxreu® .. . Kal ém- 
katow kal Tas plfas aita&y équeio’ dxpt Tay voTdTw THs ys Proyds purjv) ; but 
in our epistle, as in Jn 15°, the burning is a final doom, not a process of severe 
discipline. 


6 


82 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS [VI. 8, 9. 


*AddKios is used as in 1 Co g?/; the moral sense breaks 
through, as in the next clause, where the meaning of eis kaitou 
may be illustrated by Dt 2922 and by Philo’s more elaborate 
description of the thunderstorm which destroyed Sodom (de Aérah. 
27); God, he says, showered a blast ody vdaros adda rvpds upon 
the city and its fields, by way of punishment, and everything was 
consumed, ézrel de 74, év pavepe Kal brep yis daravra KaTavadwoev 

n Pré, in Kal THY ynv airy éxave ... Urép tod pnd adfis 
Mies Kaprrov éveyKely 7) xAonhopycat 76 maparav SovyOyvar. The 
metaphor otherwise 1s inexact, for the reference cannot be to the 
burning of a field in order to eradicate weeds; our author is 
thinking of final punishment (=xkpiwaros atwviov, 67), which he 
associates as usual with fire (1076 27 1229), The moral applica- 
tion thus impinges on the figurative sketch. The words katdpas 
éyyds actually occur in Aristides (Ovat. in Rom. 370: 70 pev 
mpoxwpetv avtots & €BovrovTo, dunxavov Kal katdpas éyyvs).! There 
is no thought of mildness in the term éyyvs, it being used, as in 
813, of imminent doom, which is only a matter of time. Mean- 
while there is the éxdoy7 (107"). 

Later on, this conception of unpardonable sins led to the whole 
system of penance, which really starts from the discussion by 
Hermas in the second century. But for our author the unpardon- 
able sin is apostasy, and his view is that of a missionary. Modern 
analogies are not awanting. Thus, in Dr. G. Warneck’s book, 
The Living Forces of the Gospel (p. 248), we read that “the Battak 
Christians would have even serious transgressions forgiven; but 
if a Christian should again sacrifice to ancestors or have anything 
to do with magic, no earnest Christian will speak in his favour ; 
he is regarded as one who has fallen back into heathenism, and 
therefore as lost.” 


9 Though I say this, beloved, I feel sure you will take the better * course 
that means salvation. God is not unfair; he will not forget what you have 
done, or the love you have shown for his sake in ministering, as you still do, to 
the satnts. “ It ¢s my heart's desire that each of you would prove equally keen 
upon realizing your full (wdnpogoplay, 10%) hope to the very end, so that 
instead of being slack you may imitate those who inherit the promises by their 
steadfast faith. 


The ground for his confident hope about his “ dear friends” 
(Tyndale, v.%) lies in the fact that they are really fruitful (v.”) in 
what is the saving quality of a Christian community, viz. brotherly 
love (v.!°). The God who blesses a faithful life (v.7) will be sure 
to reward them for that; stern though he may be, in punishing 
the disloyal, he never overlooks good service. Only (vv.1; 1%), 

1Cp. Eurip. Azppolytus, 1070: alat, rpds Frap* Saxpbwv éyyds rbde. 

2 For some reason the softer linguistic form xpelocova is used here, as at 
10*4, in preference to xpelrrova. 


VI. 9, 10.] ENCOURAGEMENT 83 


the writer adds, put as much heart and soul into your realization 
of what Christianity means as you are putting into your brotherly 
love; by thus taking the better course, you are sure of God’s 
blessing. As dyamntot indicates (the only time he uses it), the 
writer’s affection leads him to hope for the best; he is deeply 
concerned about the condition of his friends, but he does not 
believe their case is desperate (v.*). He has good hopes of them, 
and he wishes to encourage them by assuring them that he still 
believes in them. We may compare the remarks of Seneca to 
Lucilius, Zf. xxix. 3, about a mutual friend, Marcellinus, about 
whom both of them were anxious. Seneca says he has not yet 
lost hope of Marcellinus. For wisdom or philosophy ‘‘is an art ; 
let it aim at some definite object, choosing those who will make 
progress (profecturos) and withdrawing from those of whom it 
despairs—yet not abandoning them quickly, rather trying drastic 
remedies when everything seems hopeless.” Elsewhere, he 
encourages Lucilius himself by assuring him of his friend’s 
confidence and hope (£/. xxxii. 2: ‘“‘habeo quidem fiduciam non 
posse te detorqueri mansurumque in proposito”), and, in con- 
nexion with another case, observes that he will not be deterred 
from attempting to reform certain people (Z/. xxv. 2): ‘I would 


~ rather lack success than lack faith.” 


In kai (epexegetic) éxdpeva (sc. mpdypata) owtnyplas, éxdpeva, 
thus employed, is a common Greek phrase (cp. eg. Marc. 
Aurel. i. 6, 60a tovadra THs EdAnveriis aywyns éxoueva: Musonius 
(ed. Hense), x; Eyrety - maudelas éxopeva (v.20. éxdpuevov): Philo, de 
Agric. 22, Ta dé KapTeplas kal cwppootvys . . . é€xdueva) for what 
has a bearing upon, or is connected with ; here, for what pertains 
to and therefore promotes owrypia (the opposite of Kardpa 
and xado.s). The reason for this confidence, with which he 
seeks to hearten his readers, lies in their good record of practical 
service (tov épyouv duav xrd.) which God is far too just to ignore. 
(i), all, they had some fruits as well as roots of Christianity 

(v.10). *EmaSéo8ar is an infinitive of conceived result (Burton’s 
Moods and Tenses, 37%¢5 Blass, § 391. 4), instead of tva c. subj., 
aS, 6.8%, in 1 Jn 1°, or gore c. infinitive; cp. Xen. Cyrop. IV. 1. 20, 
dixaros et ReivialtenGae! The text of 10d Epyou bpav Kat Tis 
dydéans was soon harmonized with that of 1 Th 1° by the in- 
sertion of rot kdémov after kai (so D° K L 69*. 256. 263. 1611%. 
2005. 2127 boh Theodoret, etc.). The relative qv after dydans 
has been attracted into the genitive js (as in 92°). One practi- 
cal form of this S:axovety is mentioned in 10% 94, Here eis 
76 Gvopa adtod goes closely with S:aKxovyoavtes xTA., as well as 
with évedeigaobe, in the sense of “for his sake.” In /irke Aboth, 


1 See Dolon’s remark in the Rhesus of Euripides (161, 162): odxodv roveis 
Mev Xp, wovoidvTa 5 dkiov pcbdv péper Oar, 


84 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS [VI. 10, 11. 


216 R. Jose’s saying is quoted, ‘‘ Let all thy works be done for 
the sake of heaven” (literally ow), i.e. eis dvoua, as here and in 
Ign. Rom. 93 7 aydrn Tov éxkAnoLov Tov de~apevwv pe eis Gvopa 
"Incotd Xpicrod). Tots dytous, the only place (except 1374) where 
the writer uses this common term for “ fellow-Christians” ; God 
will never be so unjust as to overlook kindness shown to “his 
own.” 

The personal affection of the writer comes out not only in 
the dyamyrtot of v.9, but again (v.1!) in the deep ém@upodpey, a 
term charged with intense yearning (as Chrysostom says, tratpuK7js 
dtAooropyias), and in the individualizing €xaoroy (cp. 3!* 3%). He 
is urgent that they should display thy atéthy omoudyv with regard 
to their Christian é\mis as they display in the sphere of their 
Christian dyday. ‘This does not mean that he wishes them to be 
more concerned about saving their own souls or about heaven 
than about their duties of brotherly love; his point is that the 
higher knowledge which he presses upon their minds is the one 
security for a Christian life at all. Just as Paul cannot assume 
that the warm mutual affection of the Thessalonian Christians 
implied a strict social morality (see below on 13+), or that the 
same quality in the Philippian Christians implied moral dis- 
crimination (Ph 1°), so our author pleads with his friends to 
complete their brotherly love by a mature grasp of what their 
faith implied. He reiterates later on the need of ¢iAadeAdia 
(131), and he is careful to show how it is inspired by the very 
devotion to Christ for which he pleads (10!%?4), MAnpodopia (not 
a LXX term) here is less subjective than in 10?2, where it denotes 
the complete assurance which comes from a realization of all 
that is involved in some object. Here it is the latter sense of 
fulness, scope and depth in their—édAmis.1 This is part and 
parcel of the reAewdrys to which he is summoning them to 
advance (61). The result of this grasp of what is involved in 
their faith will be (v.!2) a vigorous constancy, without which even 
a kindly, unselfish spirit is inadequate. For évSetkvuc@at omoudiy 
compare Herodian’s remark that the soldiers of Severus in 4.D. 
193 wacav évedeiKvuvTO mpobupiay Kal _omoudiy (ii. To. 19), Magn. 
53° (ill. B.C.), drddecéuv TOLOvpEVvos THS Tepl Ta péyiota roves, 
and Syll. 342% (i. B. c.) Thy peylotnv évdeikvuTat orovdyy eis THY 
vmrép THS mraz pidos awtnpiav. ‘The Greeks used the verb as we use 
“display,” in speaking of some inward quality. This ardour 
has to be kept up dxpt tédous (cp. pseudo-Musonius, Z/¢. 1, in 
Hercher’s Zpistolog. Graect, 401 f.: typodtvras d& Hv exovor viv 
mpobecw axpt téXovs dirocopjcat); it is the sustained interest 
in essential Christian truth which issues practically in paxpo@upia 
(v.12), or in the confident attitude of hope (3° '4). 

1 For édmldos, ricrews is read in W 1867. 


VI. 11, 12.] EXAMPLES OF FAITh 85 


Aristotle, in Ret. ii. 19. 5, argues that 05  apxh Sivara yevéoOa, Kal 
TO TéNos* ovdeV yap ylyverat ovd apxerat ylyverOar Tov ddvvdtwy, a paradox 
which really means that ‘‘if you want to know whether the end of any course 
of action, plan, scheme, or indeed of anything—is possible, you must look to 
the beginning : beginning implies end: if it can be begun, it can also be 
brought to an end” (Cope). 

In v.!# the appeal is rounded off with tva ph vwbpot yévnode, 
that you may not prove remiss (repeating vw6poi from 51!, but 
in a slightly different sense: they are to be alert not simply to 
understand, but to act upon the solid truths of their faith), 
pipntat 8€ xrA. Hitherto he has only mentioned people who 
were a warning; now he encourages them by pointing out that 
they had predecessors in the line of loyalty. This incentive is 
left over for the time being; the writer returns to it in his 
panegyric upon faith in chapter 11. Meanwhile he is content 
to emphasize the steadfast faith (aiorews kai paxpoOupias, a 
hendiadys) that characterizes this loyalty. Maxpo$upia means 
here (as in Ja 5”) the tenacity with which faith holds out. 
Compare Menander's couplet (Kock’s Com. Attic. Fragm. 549), 
avOpwros av pndérote THY ahumiav | airod Tapa Gear, GANG THY 
paxpobupiay, and Zest. Jos. 2? pwéya pdppakov eotw 7 paxpoOvpia | 
kal TOAAG ayaba Sidwow 7 bropovy. But this aspect of rioris is 
not brought forward till 10%", after the discussion of the priest- 
hood and sacrifice of Christ. In kAnpovopotvtwy tas émayyedias 
the writer implies that hope is invariably sustained by a promise 
or promises. He has already mentioned 9 érayyeda (4!). 
KAnpovopety tas émayyeAias can hardly mean ‘“‘get a promise of 
something”; as the appended 814 tiotews kal paxpobupias sug- 
gests, it denotes ‘coming into possession of what is promised.” 
This is proved by the equivalent émétuye tis émayyetas in v.), 

Taking Abraham as the first or as a typical instance of steadfast 
faith in God’s promises, the writer now (vv.13-!%) lays stress not upon 
the human quality, but upon the divine basis for this undaunted 
reliance. Constancy means an effort. But it is evoked by a 
divine revelation ; what stirs and sustains it is a word of God. 
From the first the supreme Promise of God has been guaranteed 
by him to men so securely that there need be no uncertainty or 
hesitation in committing oneself to this Hope. The paragraph 
carries on the thought of vv.4!-!2; at the end, by a dexterous turn, 
the writer regains the line of argument which he had dropped 
when he turned aside to incite and reprove his readers (511*), 


13 Kor in making a promise to Abraham God ‘‘ swore by himself” (since he 
could swear by none greater), 14 “‘ J will indeed bless you and multiply you.” 
15 Thus zt was (z.e. thanks to the divine Oath) that Abraham by his steadfast- 
ness obtained (so 11**) what he had been promised. 38 For as’ men swear by 


1 To make the connexion clear, some inferior texts (C D° K L 6, 33. 104. 
1610, etc.) add pév, 


86 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS [VI. 18, 14. 


a greater than themselves, and as an oath means to them a guarantee that ends 
any dispute, ™ God, in his desire to afford the heirs of the Promise a special 
proof of the solid character of his purpose, interposed with an oath ; '8 so that 
by these two solid facts (the Promise and the Oath), where zt ¢s impossible for 
God to be false, we refugees might have strong encouragement (rapdxhnow, see 
on 12°) fo sezze the hope set before us, }° anchoring the soul to tt safe and sure, 
as it “enters the inner” Presence © behind the veil,” 


As usual, he likes to give a biblical proof or iltdetabod 
(Wyss) God’s famous promise to Abraham, but the main point 
in it is that God ratified the promise with an oath. 


Our author takes the OT references to God’s oath quite naively. Others 
had felt a difficulty, as is shown by Philo’s treatise de Abrahamo (46): ‘* God, 
enamoured of this man [z.e. Abraham], for his faith (zicrw) in him, gives him 
in return a pledge (iorw), guaranteeing by an oath (rhv d¢ Spxov BeBalworr) . 
the gifts he had promised . . . for he says, ‘I swear by myself’ (Gn 22!6)— 
and with him a word is an oath—for the sake of confirming his mind more 
steadfastly and immovably than ever before.” But the references to God’s 
oaths were a perplexity to Philo; his mystical mind was embarrassed by their 
realism. In de sacrif. Abelis et Catni (28, 29) he returns to the subject. 
Hosts of people, he admits, regard the literal sense of these OT words as 
inconsistent with God’s character, since an oath implies (uaprupla Oeod mepl 
mpadyuaros aupisByroupévov) God giving evidence in a disputed matter ; 
whereas Oe ovdev ddnrov ov5e dudisBnrovmevov, God’s mere word ought to 
be enough: 6 dé Oeds kal Aéywv miords éeoriv, wore Kai tovs Ndyous abroad 
BeBatirnros Evexa pndév Spxwv diadépery. He inclines to regard the OT 
references to God’s oaths as a condescension of the sacred writer to dull 
minds rather than as a condescension upon God’s part. In Leg. Allegor. ili. 72 
he quotes this very passage (Gn 2276 17), adding : ed Kal 7d 8pxw BeBardoar 
Thy dmboxeow kal Spx Oeomperret* opas yap bre od Kal’ érépov duvvter Oeds, 
ovdev yap avrod Kpeirrov, adda Kad’ éauTod, bs eort wdvTwy dpicros. But he 
feels bound to explain it. Some of his contemporaries had begun to take 
exception to such representations of God, on the ground that God’s word 
required no formal confirmation—it confirmed itself by being fulfilled—and 
that it was absurd (drozov) to speak of God swearing by himself, in order to 
bear testimony to himself.! Philo (22d. 73) attempts to meet this objection 
by urging that only God can bear testimony to himself, since no one else 
knows the divine nature truly ; consequently it is appropriate for him to add 
confirmation to his word, although the latter by itself 1s amply deserving of 
belief. In Berachoth, 32. 1 (on Ex 32)%), it is asked, ‘‘ What means 73? R. 
Eleazar answered: ‘Thus saith Moses to God (Blessed be He!), ‘Lord of 
all the world, hadst thou sworn by heaven and earth, I would say, even as 
heaven and earth shall perish, so too thine oath shall perish. But now thou 
hast sworn by thy Great Name, which lives and lasts for ever and ever; so 
shall thine oath also last for ever and ever.’ ” 


Exe (v.18) with infin. =édvvaro as usual. “Quocev.... et 
pyy...etdoyjow. Both the LXX (Thackeray, pp. 83, 84) and the 
papyri (Deissmann, Bible Studies, 205 f.) show that ¢? pny after 
duvvew in oaths is common as an asseveration ; in some cases, 
as here, the classical form 4 pyv, from which ei pyv arose by 
itacism, is textually possible. The quotation (v.1*) is from the 
promise made to Abraham after the sacrifice of Isaac (Gn 2216-17); 
KaT €“avTod w@pooa... eb pyv evAoyav evAoynow oe, Kal 7h 

1 This is the point raised in Jn 815+ . 


VI. 15-17. | THE OATH OF GOD 87 


Oivwv tAnbvvG Td orépua cov. The practical religious value of 
God’s promise being thus (v.!5) confirmed is now brought out for 
the present generation (vv.!6&—another long sentence). Kata 
tod petLovos, z.¢. by God. Which, Philo argues, is irreverent: 
doeBets av vomobetev of Packovtes duvivar kata Oeod (Leg. Adlegor. 
lil. 73), since only swearing by the Name of God is permissible (cp. 
Dt 618), But our author has no such scruples (see above). And 
he is quite unconscious of any objection to oaths, such as 
some early Christian teachers felt (e.g. Ja 5!2); he speaks of the 
practice of taking oaths without any scruples. ‘‘Hic locus... 
docet aliquem inter Christianos jurisjurandi usum esse legiti- 
mum... porro non dicit olim fuisse in usu, sed adhuc vigere 
pronuntiat” (Calvin). “AvtiAoyias, dispute or quarrel (the derived 
sense in 77 xwpls mdaons dvTiWoyias, there is no disputing). Eis 
BeBaiowouw only occurs once in the LXX (Ly 2573), but is a 
current phrase in the papyri (cp. Deissmann’s Azble Studies, 
163 f.) for ‘‘ by way of guarantee”; it is opposed to eis a6érnou, 
and used here as in Wis 619 rpocoy7) d¢ vouwv BeBaiwars adOap- 
aias. In Philo (see on v.18) it is the oath which is guaranteed ; 
here the oath guarantees. The general idea of v.!’ is that of 
OGIS. (ii. B.C.), daws ay eis TOV Gravta ypovov dkivyta Kal dpera- 
Gera péevynt Ta Te mpos Tov Geov Tipia Kal Ta mpos Tov "AOnvatov 
piravOpwra, "Ev 6 (=610, Theophylact), such being the case. 
Nepisodtepov, which goes with émdetgar, is illustrated by what Philo 
says in de Abrahamo, 46 (see above): ‘‘abundantius quam sine 
juramento factum videretur” (Bengel). It is an equivalent 
for mepiocorepas, which, indeed, B reads here. “EmSetgar (cp. 
Elephantine-Papyri [1907] 17 (iv. B.c.) émideEarw de “Hpaxdeidns 
Ori av eyxaAne Anuntpiat évavriov avdpav tpidv): the verb, which 
is only once used of God in the LXX (Is 37% viv d¢ érédecéa 
eEepnuaoat €Ovy xrX.), means here “‘to afford proof of.” The 
writer uses the general plural, tots kAypovopors THs émayyeXtas,! 
instead of the singular “‘ Abraham,” since the Promise in its 
mystical sense applied to the entire People, who had faith 
like that of Abraham. The reference is not specifically to 
Isaac and Jacob, although these are called his cuykAnpovépor in 
11% In 1d d&petdbetov tis BouAfs Our author evidently chooses 
Bovdyjs for the sake of the assonance with Boudédpevos. “Awetd- 
Qeros is a synonym for dxivyros (cp. above on v.!? and 
Schol. on Soph. Aztig. 1027), and, as the papyri show, 
had a frequent connexion with wills in the sense of ‘“irrevoc- 
able.” Here, in connexion with fovdA7s, it implies final 
determination (cp. 3 Mac 51+ 1%); the purpose had a fixed 


1 Eusebius once (Dem. iv. 15. 40) omits ris érayyeNlas, and once (zbzd. 
V, 3. 21) reads 77s Bacidelas, either accidentally or with a recollection of 
a2 


88 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS [VI. 17-19. 


character or solidity about it. The verb éepeoitevoey (‘‘inter- 
vened”) does not occur in the LXX, and is here used intransi- 
tively, instead of, as usual (cp. eg. Dion. Halic. Amt. ix. 59. 5; 
OGTIS. 437% etc.), with some accusative like ovv@jxas. In Jos. 
Ant. vii. 8. 5 it is used intransitively, but in the sense of ‘inter- 
ceding” (mewrOets 3 6 “IdaBos Kat THY dvdyKnv adbrod KarorkTetpas 
euecitevoe mpos Tov Bactrea). ‘The oath is almost certainly that 
just mentioned. Less probable is the interpretation (Delitzsch, 
Hofmann, M. Stuart, von Soden, Peake, Seeberg, Wickham) 
which regards the oath referred to in vv.!6* as the oath in the 
writer’s favourite psalm, 110*: 


+ , \ > 4 
apooev Kupios kat ov petapednOjoerar 

\ OTe \ > \ 2A \ \ 4 4 
Xb el tepeds eis Tov aidva Kata tTHv Tagw MedAyioddex. 


This oath does refer to the priesthood of Jesus, which the writer 
is about to re-introduce (in v.2°); but it is not a thought which 
is brought forward till 72% 21: 28; and the second line of the 
couplet has been already quoted (5°) without any allusion to the 
first. 

In v.18 katabedyew and édmlis are connected, but not as in 
Wis 14° (Noah=7 éAmis tod Kocpov éri oyxedias, Katapvyoica). 
Here, as é\mis means what is hoped for, z.e. the object of expecta- 
tion, ‘the only thought is that we are moored to an immoveable 
object” (A. B. Davidson). The details of the anchor-metaphor 
are not to be pressed (v.!®); the writer simply argues that 
we are meant to fix ourselves to what has been fixed for us by 
God and in God. To change the metaphor, our hope roots 
itself in the eternal order. What we hope for is unseen, being 
out of sight, but it is secure and real, and we can grasp it by 
faith. 


(a) Philo (Quaest. tn Exod. 22) ascribes the survival and success of the 
Israelites in Egypt dca tiv él Tov cwripa Oedv Katapvyny, bs é& drépwv Kal 
aunxdveyv émiméupas tiv evepyéri dSivauw épptoaro rovs ixéras. (6) Tév is 
inserted in v.’8 before Oedv (by x* AC P 33. 1245. 1739. 1827. 2005 Ath. 
Chrys. ), probably to harmonize with 6 @edés in v.17 (where 1912 omits 6). But 
dedv (‘‘one who is God”) is quite apposite. 


Mapdkd\ynow goes with kpatijoat (aor. =“ seize,” rather than 
“hold fast to,” like xparetv in 41*), and ot kataguydvtes stands by 
itself, though there is no need to conjecture ot xara duynv évres = 
in our flight (so J. J. Reiske, etc.). Is not eternal life, Philo 
asks, 7) mpos TO bv Katrapvyy (de fuga, 15)? In tis mpoxepevns 
eAniSos, mpoxeywevns must have the same sense as in 122; the 
colloquial sense of “aforesaid,” which is common in the papyri 
(eg. OP. 1275 eis ryv mpoximevny kopnv), would be flat. 
*Aopahf te Kat BeBaiay reflects one of the ordinary phrases in 
Greek ethics which the writer is so fond of employing. Cp. 


VI. 19.] THE ANCHOR OF HOPE 89 


Plutarch, de comm. not. 1061¢, Kacrou maca Katddnis ev TO 
cope Kal puny TO dopahes € EXOUTA Kal i BeBavov xTA. : Sextus Empir. 
adv. log. 1. 374, és TO brroruG€pevov 7 bmroriGerar BéBaov eo 
kat aopadés: and Philo, gus rer. div. 62, katddrAndus aodadrns kal 
BeBaia. The a@yxupa of hope is safe and sure, as it is fixed in 
eternity. All hope for the Christian rests in what Jesus has 
done in the eternal order by his sacrifice. 


Chrysostom’s comment on the ‘‘anchor” metaphor is all that is needed : 


womep yap ) dyxupa éaprnGeioa Tod mrolov, ovk adinoev aiTd mepipéper Oat, 
Kay pvplor mapacadevwow avewor, adr’ eEaprnPeioa Edpaiov tore?’ otrw Kal 4 
é\mis. The anchor of hope was a fairly common metaphor in the later Greek 
ethic (¢.g. Heliod. vii. 25, raca éAzldos Adee twavTolws avésmacrat, and Epict. 
Fragm. (30) 89, ov're vatv é& évds ayxuplov obre Blov éx mids éArldos dpyutoréov), 
but our author may have taken the religious application from Philo, who 
writes (de Somnzis, i. 39), ob xph Karemrnxévar Tov édAmidse Gelas cuppaylas 
€popmovvra (lies moored to). He does not use it as a metaphor for stability, 
however, like most of the Greeks from Euripides (¢.g. Helena, 277, dyxupa 
5 4} mov ras TUXas Gxet wdvyn) and Aristophanes (¢.g. Anzghts, 1244, erry 
tis édmrls éor éd’ Fs dxovueba) onwards, as, ¢.g., in the most famous use of the 
anchor-metaphor,” that by Pythagoras (Stob. Eclog. 3: mdotros dodevhs 
dykupa, ddfa é7t doOeveotépa . .. Tlves odv AyKvpat Suvaral; gppdvyers, 
peyaropuxia, avdpla* ravras ovfels Yeruwv ganevet), 

Suddenly he breaks the metaphor,’ in order to regain the 
idea of the priesthood of Jesus in the invisible world. Hope 
enters the unseen world ; the Christian hope, as he conceives it, 
is bound up with the sacrifice and intercession of Jesus in the 
Presence of God, and so he uses language from the ritual of 
Lv 162! about Aaron “ passing inside the veil,” or curtain that 
screened the innermost shrine. To this conception he returns 
in g** after he has described the vital functions of Jesus as 
tepevs (6202), For at last he has reached what he regards as the 
cardinal theme of his homily. The first paragraph (7!), which 
is one long sentence in Greek, applies and expands eis tév aidva, 
the first note of Melchizedek’s priesthood being that it is per- 
petual, thus typifying the priesthood of Jesus. The next is (741°), 
that it is prior and superior to the levitical priesthood ; this is 


1The comparison between hope and a voyage in de Abrahamo, 9, is 
different: 6 d¢ éArifwy, ws avrd SynAol Totvoua, éAdAuns, Epiéuevos pev del Tov 
Kadov, wimw 8 épixécOar tovrov deduynuévos, GAN €orxws Tots mréovowv, of 
omevdovres els Niywévas KaTalpewy Oaratrevovow évopuloacbar wh Svuvduevor, 
This is nearer to the thought of Ro 8+, 

2 For the anchor as a symbol on tombs, pagan and Christian, see Le 
Blant’s Zzscr. Chrét. de Gaule, ii. 158, 312. Contrast with He 6'% )® the 
bitter melancholy of the epitaph i in the Greek Anthology (ix. 49): éAmls kal 
ov, Tixn, méya xalpere’ Tov Ayu’ eEBpov: | ovdev euol x’ duty walfere Tovs 
per’ éué. 

8 A similar mixture of metaphor in Z/. Aristeas, 230 (cé pev od Suvardy 
éoTt Wraicat, Taor yap xdpiras Eomapkas al BXacrdvovow evvorav, h TA méy.oTo, 
Tov drwy KaTicxvovTa mwepitauBdver THy pmeylorny dopddecav), and Philo, de 
praemtts, 2 (radrns 8 & moGras ordbpos early édmis, ) myyh THv Blur). 


go THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS [ VI. 20-VII. 1. 


implied in the former claim, but the writer works it out faueiiony 
from the allusion to tithes. 


20 There (dou for the classical 87a) Jesus entered for us in advance, when 
he became highpriest ‘‘ for ever with the rank of Melchizedek.” For 
‘* Melchizedek, the king of Salem, a priest of the Most High God,” who ‘‘ met 
Abraham on his return from the slaughter of the kings and blessed him” — 
2who had ‘a tenth part (Sexdrnyv, sc. wotpav) of everything” assigned him. by 
Abraham—this Melchizedek zs (sc. dv) primarily a *‘ king of righteousness” 
(that ts the meaning of his name); then, besides that, ‘‘king of Salem” 
(which means, king of peace). * He has neither father nor mother nor gene- 
alogy, nether a beginning to his days nor an end to his life, but, resembling 
the Son of God, continues to be ‘‘ priest” permanently. 


This paragraph and that which follows (vv.*!) are another 
little sermon, this time on the story of Gn 14!820, In 620-73- 
the writer starts from the idea that Jesus is dpyvepedts eis Tov 
ai@va Kata THY rab Medyioedéx, and shows how the Melchizedek 
priesthood was eis roy aidva, ze. explaining Ps 110* from Gn 
1418-20, Eioy\Oev in 679 is explained later, in 91. Mpdé8popos 
recalls dpxnyds (21°), with its suggestion of pioneering. The 
term is only used in the LXX of the days éapos, mpodpopot 
orapvAns (Nu 137%), or of early fruit (®s rpodpopos ovKov, Is 28%) ; 
the present sense occurs, however, in Wis 128, where wasps or 
hornets are called the mpé8pouot of God’s avenging host. The 
thought here is of Christ entering heaven as we are destined to 
do, after him, once like him (5%) we are “ perfected.” Vv.13 
in ch. 7 are another of the writer’s long sentences: obtos 6 Meh- 
xtoedex . . . pever Lepeds eis TO Senvexés is the central thought, 
but the subject is overloaded with quotations and comments, 
including a long pev. . . 8€ clause. The length of the sentence 
and the difficulty of applying péver tepedrs eis 7d dunvecés to 
Melchizedek have led some editors to make Jesus the subject of 
the sentence: otros (Jesus) yap (6 MeAxivedéx . . . TO vid Oeod) 
pever tepeds eis tov aidva. But the otros, as v.* shows, is 
Melchizedek, and the theory is wrecked upon v.8, for it is quite 
impossible to take éxet xr. as “in the upper sanctuary (se. eorw) 
there is One of whom the record is that He lives.” There is a 
slight but characteristic freedom at the very outset in the use of 
the story, ¢.g. in 6 ouvaytiaas xtA. The story implies this, but 
does not say it. It was the king of Sodom who é&jAOe eis 
cuwdvrnow avTa pera TO trootpéar adtov ard THs Komns, but as 
Melchizedek is immediately said to have brought the conquering 
hero bread and wine, our writer assumed that he also met 
Abraham. 


An interesting example of the original reading being preserved in an 
inferior group of MSS is afforded by 6 ovvaytyaas (C* LP). The variant 
bs cuvayrncas (8X ABC? D K W 33. 436. 794. 1831. 1837. 1912), which 
makes a pointless anacolouthon, was due to the accidental reduplication of C 


Wi 1°23) MELCHIZEDEK Ql 


— 


(OCCYN for OCYN), though attempts have been made to justify this 
reading by assuming an anacolouthon in the sentence, or a parenthesis in 
és . . . ’AB8padp, or carelessness on the part of the writer who began with a 
relative and forgot to carry on the proper construction. Some curious 
homiletic expansions have crept into the text of vv.*. After Baothkéwy two 
late minuscules (456. 460) read 8ru édlwtev rods d\Xopbdous kal uaa Awr 
pera waons aixuarwatas, and after avrév, D* vt 330. 440. 823 put Kal (’ABpadp) 
eVoynoGels br atrod. The latter is another (cp. 1173) of the glosses which 
were thrown up by the Latin versions. 


In v.? éu€picey is substituted for the édwxev of the LXX (which 
reappears in v.*), in order to make it clear that Abraham’s gift 
was a sort of tithe. Tithes were not paid by the Hebrews 
from spoils of war; this was a pagan custom. But such is the 
interpretation of the story in Philo, eg. in his fragment on Gn 

1438 (Fragments of Phila, ed. J. Rendel Harris, P. 72): TO yap 
TOU Tohewov dpioreia SSuot TO lepet Kat TOS TS viKns dmapxas. 
LepompeTrEecTaTy de Kat aywwtarn TATwV aTrapYav n dexarn dua. TO 
mavTéXevov elvat Tov apiOpov, ah ov Kal Tols tepedor Kal vewKOpots 
ai dexarau _mpoordger vOpov Kapmav wat Opepparov darodibovrat, 
dpfavros THS amapyns “ABpaap, Os Kat Tod yévous apynyéerys eorriv. 
Or again in de congressu, 17, where he describes the same incident 
as Abraham offeririg God ras dexdtas xapiorypia THs viKns. 


The fantastic interpretation of the Melchizedek episode is all the writer’s 
own. What use, if any, was made of Melchizedek in pre-Christian Judaism, 
is no longer to be ascertained. Apparently the book of Jubilees contained a 
reference to this episode in Abraham’s career, but it has been excised for 
some reason (see R. H. Charles’ note on Jub 13”). Josephus makes little of 
the story (Amz. i. 10.2). He simply recounts how, when Abraham returned 
from the rout of the Assyrians, drjvrnce 5° alr ge 6 TOv LodomiTSv Bacideds els 
rémov Tiva dv Kadovor Iledlov Bacidixdv’ vba 6 Tis DorAuwa wodews vrodéxerat 
Baoieds avrov Medxuoedéxns. onualyer dé rodTo Bacwreds Sikaos* Kal hv dé 
TOLOUTOS Sporoyouperens, ws dua Tavrnv avrov Thy ailriay Kal iepéa yeveo Bat TOU 
Geo}. Thy MEévToL Zoruua bar epov éxd decay * Tepoo éhupa. EXOPIYNTE dé obros 6 
Medxioedéxns TH ’ABpd wou oTpAT@ fév.a kal Tony apboviay Tay émiTnoelwv 
mapéoxe, Kal mapa Thy ebuxlar avrov 7 émaveiv Hptaro kal Tov Oedv evdoyetv 
Umoxetplous adr Towoavra Tovs €xPpovs. "ABpduou dé SiddvTos kal Thy dexarny 


energie. 


Ths helas adr@, mpordéxerat thy dow xTd. In the later Judaism, however, ' 
more interest was taken in Melchizedek (cp. M. Friedlander in Revue des | 


Etudes Juives, v. pp. 1f.). Thus some applied the r1oth psalm to Abraham 


(Mechilta on Ex 157, r. Gen. 55. 6), who was ranked as the priest after the order © 


of Melchizedek, while Melchizedek was supposed to have been degraded 
because he (Gn ’14)9) mentioned the name of Abraham before that of God! 
This, as Bacher conjectures, represented a protest against the Christian view 
of Melchizedek (Agada der Tannatten*, i. p. 259). It denotes the influence 
of IIpds ‘Efpalovs. Philo, as we might expect, had already made more of the 
episode than Josephus, | and it is Philo’s method of interpretation which gives 
the clue to our writer’s use of the story. Thus in Leg. Alleg, iii. 25; 26. 
he points out (a) that Mehxuoedex paoshet Te THs elphvns—Larhu Todro yap 
Epynveverar—kal lepéa éavrod metolnxev} 6 Oeds (in Gn 1438), and allegorizes the 
reference into a panegyric upon the peaceful, persuasive influence of the really 
royal mind. He then (4) does the same with the sacerdotal reference. ’AAW’ 


1 The same sort of perfect as recurs in IIpds ‘Efpatous (e.g. 78 and 11%), 


92 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS [ VII. 2, 3. 


Oo wer Medxioedéx avri tdatos olvoy mpocpepérw kal moriférw Kal axpariféra 
Yuxds, va kardoyxero. yévwvrat Ocig wéOn vndarewrépa vijwews airis. lepers 
yap é€ore Ndyos KAjpov éxwv Tov bvTa Kal VWyAGs TeEpl avTod Kal UrepoyKws Kal 
peyadorperas Noytfduevos* Tob yap bWicrou early iepeds, quoting Gn 14'8 and 
hastening to add, ovx é7e éori tis dAXNos odX UYroros. Philo points out thus, 
the symbolism of wine (not water) as the divine intoxication which raises the) 
soul to lofty thought of God; but our author does not even mention the food) 
and drink, though later on there was a tendency to regard them as symbolizing | 
the elements in the eucharist. His interest in Melchizedek lies in the parallel | 
to Christ. This leads him along a line of his own, though, like Philo, he sees 
immense significance not only in what scripture says, but in what it does nord 
say, about this mysterious figure in the early dawn of history. 


In vy.!:? the only points in the original tale which are 
specially noted are (a) that his name means Baotdeds Stxaoodyys ; 
(6) that Zadnp, his capital, means eipyyy ; and (c) inferentially that 
this primitive ideal priest was also a king. Yet none of these 
is developed. Thus, the writer has no interest in identifying. 
Sarnp. All that matters is its meaning. He quotes tepeds Toi 
Geod rod tWicrov, but it is tepevs alone that interests him. The 
fact about the tithes (@ kal Sexdtyv dnd tdvtwv eépépioev “ABpadp) 
is certainly significant, but it is held over until v.42. What strikes 
him as far more vital is the silence of the record about the birth 
and death of Melchizedek (v.’). Atkatoodvy as a royal character- 
istic (see Introd. pp. xxxiif.) had been already noted in con- 
nexion with Christ (18°); but he does not connect it with eipyvy, 
as Philo does, though the traditional association of dixatoovvy Kai 
eipyjvy With the messianic reign may have been in his mind. In 
the alliteration (v.°) of dmdrwp, duyjtwp, dyeveaddyntos, the third 
term is apparently coined by himself; it does not mean “of no 
pedigree,” nor ‘‘ without successors,” but simply (cp. v.®) ‘‘de- 
void of any genealogy.” Having no beginning (since none is 
mentioned), M. has no end. ‘Amwdtwp and éujtwp are boldly 
lifted from their pagan associations. In the brief episode of Gn 
148-20, this mysterious Melchizedek appears only as a priest of 
God; his birth is never mentioned, neither is his death; unlike 
the Aaronic priests, with whom a pure family descent was vital, 
this priest has no progenitors. Reading the record in the light 
of Ps rio‘, and on the Alexandrian principle that the very. 
silence of scripture is charged with meaning, the writer divires 
in Melchizedek a priest who is permanent. This method of 
interpretation had been popularized by Philo. In guod det. pot. 
48, e.g., he calls attention to the fact that Moses does not explain 
in Gn 4 what was the mark put by God upon Cain. Why? 
Because the mark was to prevent him from being killed. Now 
Moses never mentions the death of Cain dia waons ris vopobecias, 
suggesting that ®o7ep 7 peprderpevy 2KvAXa, KaKOV dOdvaroy é €OTLW 
adpootvy. Again (de Ebriet. 14) elrre yap Tov Tus “Kal yap adnOds 
adeApy pov éotw éx watpds, “adN’ odk ék pytpds” (Gn 20!2)— 


VII. 3. | MELCHIZEDEK AS PRIEST 93 


Abraham’s evasive description of Sarah—is most significant ; she 
had no mother, z.e. she had no connexion with the material 
world of the senses. 


’Amdrwp and duijrwp were applied to (a) waifs, whose parents were un- 
known ; or (4) to illegitimate children ; or (c) to people of low origin ; or (d) 
to deities who were supposed to have been born, like Athené and Hephaestus, 
from only one sex. Lactantius (dzwzm. zmstzt. i. 7) quotes the Delphic oracle, 
which described Apollo as dujrwp, and insists that such terms refer only to 
God (zézd. iv. 13). ‘*As God the Father, the origin and source of things, 
is without parentage, he is most accurately called drdrwp and durjrwp by 
Trismegistus, since he was not begotten by anyone. Hence it was fitting 
that the Son also should be twice born, that he too should become dmdrwp 
and dufjrwp.” His argument apparently? is that the pre-existent Son was 
duhrwp and that He became admdrwp by the Virgin-birth (so Theodore of 
Mopsuestia). Lactantius proves the priesthood of Christ from Ps 1104 among 
other passages, but he ignores the deduction from the Melchizedek of Gn 14 ; 
indeed he gives a rival derivation of Jerusalem as if from lepdv Zodouwr. 
Theodoret, who (D2a/. ii.) explains that the incarnate Son was du7jrwp, with 
respect to his divine nature, and dyeveaddéynros in fulfilment of Is 53°, faces 
the difficulty of Melchizedek with characteristic frankness. Melchizedek, he 
explains, is described as dmdrwp, duijrwp, simply because scripture does not 
record his parentage or lineage. Hi d\nOds drdtwp jv Kal dujrwp, odk av jv 
elkav, GAN GdAjOea. "Hedy dé od ioe tair’ Exer, dAAA KaTa Thy Tijs Oelas 
T'papijs olkovoulav, delkvvor THs adnOelas Tov rvrov. In his commentary he 
explains that péves lepevs els TO Ounvexés means Ty lepwovvyy ob mapéreuwer els 
matoas, Kabdmrep’ Aapwy kal "ENedgap kal Piveés. 

"Adwpowwnevos in v.®? means “resembling,” as, eg., in Lp. 
Jerem.” yexpo éppysévy &v oxore dpwpotwvrat ot Geoi atrav, though 
it might even be taken as a strict passive, “‘made to resemble” 
(z.e. in scripture), the Son of God being understood to be eternal, 
Eis 16 Sunvexés is a classical equivalent for eis rov aidva, a phrase 
which is always to be understood in the light of its context. 
Here it could not be simply ‘‘ad vitam”; the foregoing phrases 
and the fact that even the levitical priests were appointed for 
life, rule out such an interpretation. 

The writer now (vv.*!°) moralizes upon the statement that 
Abraham paid tithes to Melchizedek and received his blessing, 
which proves the supreme dignity of the Melchizedek priesthood, 
and, inferentially, its superiority to the levitical. 

4 Now mark the dignity of this man. The patriarch ‘* Abraham paid” 
him ‘‘a tenth” of the spoils. ° Those sons of Levi, who receive the priestly 
office, are indeed ordered by law to tithe the people (that ts, their brothers), 
although the latter are descended from Abraham; ® but he who had no 
levitical (€& abrév=éx Tav vidv Aevel) genealogy actually tithed Abraham and 
‘* blessed” the possessor of the promises! ™(And there ts no question that tt is 
the infertor who zs blessed by the superior.) *® Again, it ts mortal men in the 
one case who receive tithes, while tn the other zt ts one of whom the witness ts 
that “he lives.” *° In fact, we might almost say that even Levt the receiver 
of tithes paid tithes through Abraham ; ° for he was still in the loins of his 
father when Melchizedek met him. 


1 Jn iv. 25 he says that ‘‘as God was the Father of his spirit without a 
mother, so a virgin was the mother of his body without a father.” 


94 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS _ [VII. 4-8. 


@cwpette (v.4) is an oratorical imperative as in 4 Mac 14% 
(ewpetre 5¢ m&s roddrdoxds éoTw H THs piroreKvias oTopyy) ; 
mydixos is a rare word, often used for 7Atkos after vowels, though 
not in Zec 2° (rod idety ryAlkov 76 wAdTos airis éorw), where alone 
it occurs in the LXX. The otros (om. D* 67**. 1739 Blass) 
repeats the otros of v.... We have now a triple proof of the 
inferiority of the levitical priesthood to Melchizedek. (a) Mel- 
chizedek, though not in levitical orders, took tithes from and 
gave a blessing to Abraham himself (vv.*7); (4) he is never 
recorded to have lost his priesthood by death (v.§); and (c) in- 
deed, in his ancestor Abraham, Levi yet unborn did homage to 
Melchizedek (% 19). Té& dxpo@ivia (v.4), which this alone of NT. 
writers has occasion to use, explains the wavra of v.?; it is one 
of the classical terms for which he went outside the LXX. 
‘O matpidpyys is thrown to the end of the sentence for emphasis. 
In v.® iepatetay is chosen instead of iepwovvnv for the sake of 
assonance with Aevet. The LXX does not distinguish them 
sharply. The general statement about tithing, kata tov vopov 
(the évroAy of Nu 1870 21), is intended to throw the spontaneous 
action of Abraham into relief; dmodexatody of “tithing” persons 
occurs in 1 § 85! but usually means ‘‘to pay tithes,” like the 
more common 8exarody (v.°), the classical form being dexareveuw. 
In v.° the perfect edNoyyxe is like the Philonic perfect (see above). 
In describing the incident (de Abrahamo, 40), Philo lays stress 
upon the fact that 6 péyas tepevs tod peyiotov Geod offered érivixca 
and feasted the conquerors ; he omits both the blessing and the 
offering of tithes, though he soon allegorizes the latter (41). 


Moulton calls attention to “‘the beautiful parallel in Plato’s Afo/. 28c, 
for the characteristic perfect in Hebrews, describing what stands written in 
Scripture,” holding that ‘‘ Sco. év Tpolg rereXevrijxact (as is written in the 
Athenians’ Bible) is exactly like He 7® 11178.” But these perfects are 
simply aoristic (see above, p. 9I, note). 

V.” is a parenthetical comment on what blessing and being 
blessed imply; the neuter (€\atrtov) is used, as usual in Greek 
(cp. Blass, § 138. 1), in a general statement, especially in 
a collective sense, about persons. Then the writer rapidly 
summarizes, from vv.!4, the contrast between the _levitical 
priests who die off and Melchizedek whose record (saprupovpevos 
in scripture, cp. 115) is “he lives” (unre was téXos . . . peve 
eis TO Sunvecés). Finally (vv.% 1°), he ventures (ds ézos eizely, a 
literary phrase, much affected by Philo) on what he seems to 
feel may be regarded as a forced and fanciful remark, that Levi 
was committed 8 “ABpadp (genitive) to a position of respectful 
deference towards the prince-priest of Salem. In v.> xatwep 
€XnduOdtas éx THs doptos “ABpadp (the Semitic expression for 
descendants, chosen here in view of what he was. going to say in 


VII. 9-11. | THE MELCHIZEDEK PRIESTHOOD 95 


v.10 éy +H dagvi tod matpds) is another imaginative touch added 
in order to signalize the pre-eminent honour of the levitical 
priests over their fellow-countrymen. Such is their high authority. 
And yet Melchizedek’s is higher still ! 


(a) In v.® * forte legendum, 6 6¢ wip yeveadoyovmevos abrov Sedexdrwe Tov 
"ABpadu, ipsum Abrahamam” (Bentley). But é a’réy explains itself, and 
the stress which av’rév would convey is already brought out by the emphatic 
position of ’ABpadu, and by the comment kal rdv Exovra xTrd. (6) In v.4 kat 
is inserted after @, in conformity with v.27, by s AC D¢ K L P syrhkl arm, 
etc. For &moSexartovy in v.° the termination (cp. Thackeray, 244) dzodexa- 
row is read by B D (as xaracknvoity in Mt 13°"). In v.® the more common 
(117) aorist, evAdynoe, is read by AC P 6. 104. 242. 263. 326. 383. 1288. 
1739. 2004. 2143, Chrys. for evAdynke. 


He now (vv.!*) turns to prove his point further, by glancing 
at the text from the 110th psalm. ‘It is no use to plead that 
Melchizedek was succeeded by the imposing Aaronic priest- 
hood; this priesthood belonged to an order of religion which 
had to be superseded by the Melchizedek-order of priesthood.” 
He argues here, as already, from the fact that the psalter is later 
than the pentateuch; the point of 7! is exactly that of 47. 


Ul Further, if the levitical priesthood had been the means of reaching per- 
fection ( for tt was on the basts of that priesthood that the Law was enacted for 
the People), why was it still necessary for another sort of priest to emerge 
““ wth the rank of Melchizedek,” instead of simply with the rank of Aaron 
(?2 for when the priesthood ts changed, a change of law necessarily follows) ? 
13 He who zs thus (t.e. ‘‘ with the rank of M.”) described belongs to another 
tribe, no member of which ever devoted himself to the altar ; \4 for tt is evident 
that our Lord sprang from Judah, and Moses never mentioned priesthood in 
connexion with that tribe. © This becomes all the more plain when (el=éwel) 
another priest emerges ‘‘resembling Melchizedek,” 8 one who has become a 
priest by the power of an indissoluble (dxaradvrov, z.e. by death) Life and 
not by the Law of an external command ; ™ for the witness to him ts, 

‘* Thou art priest for ever, with the rank of Melchizedek.” 
18 4 previous command ts set aside on account of its weakness and uselessness 
19 ( for the Law made nothing perfect), and there is introduced a better Hope, 
by means of which we can draw near to God. 


Et pév odv (without any dé to follow, as in 84) tedelwors 
(‘‘ perfection” in the sense of a perfectly adequate relation to 
God ; see v.19) 81a THs AevertiKis tepwotvns xTrA. Aeveitixys IS a 
rare word, found in Philo (de fuga, » Acvitixy wovn), but never in 
the LXX except in the title of Leviticus ; tepwavvy does occur in 
the LXX, and is not distinguishable from tepareéa (v.5). In the 
parenthetical remark 6 dads yap em adtis vevopobérnTat, aitis 
was changed into airy (6. 242. 330. 378. 383. 440. 462. 467. 
489. 491. 999. 1610. 1836 Theophyl.), or airy (K L 326. 1288, 
etc. Chrys.) after 8° (where again we have this curious passive), 
and vevoyo0erjtat altered into the pluperfect évevoyoférnro 
(K L, etc.) The less obvious genitive (cp. Ex. 3477 éi yap 


tav Adywv TovTwv TéHepwar cot SiabyKynv Kal TO “Iopaydr) éw adtijs 


96 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS |VII. 11-18. 


is not “in the time of,” for the levitical priesthood was not in 
existence prior to the Law; it might mean ‘‘in connexion with,” 
since ézi and zrepi have a similar force with this genitive, but the 
incorrect dative correctly explains the genitive. The Mosaic 
vouos could not be worked for the Aads without a priesthood, to 
deal with the offences incurred. The idea of the writer always 
is that a vouwos or dtabyjxy depends for its validity and effective- 
ness upon the tepevs or iepets by whom it is administered. Their 
personal character and position are the essential thing. Every con- 
sideration is subordinated to that of the priesthood. Asa change 
in that involves a change in the voyos (v.!”), the meaning of the 
parenthesis in v.!! must be that the priesthood was the basis for the 
vounos, though, no doubt, the writer has put his points in vv.1) 2 
somewhat intricately ; this parenthetical remark would have been 
better placed after the other in v.!*, as indeed van d. Sande 
Bakhuyzen proposes. ‘Three times over (cp. v.!®) he puts in 
depreciatory remarks about the Law, the reason being that the 
Law and the priesthood went together. It is as if he meant 
here: ‘the levitical priesthood (which, of course, implies the 
Law, for the Law rested on the priesthood).” The inference 
that the vduos is antiquated for Christians reaches’ the same end 
as Paul does by his dialectic, but by a very different route. 
*Aviotac@at (= appear onthe scene, as v.!°) and Aéyeo@ar refer to 
Ps 1r1o*, which is regarded as marking a new departure, with 
far-reaching effects, involving (v.!*) an alteration of the vépos as 
wellas of the tepwotvyn. In kaiod ... éyerPar the ov negatives 
the infinitive as py usually does; “Aapév, like Kava (Jn 217), has 
become indeclinable, though Josephus still employs the ordinary 
genitive “Aap@vos. In v.!" perdeots, which is not a LXX term, 
though it occurs in 2 Mac 1174, is practically equivalent here 
(cp. 1277) to d&Oérnors in v.18 A close parallel occurs in de 
Mundo, 6, vomos pev yap nptv icoxivis 6 eds, ovdepiay émoexo~ 
pevos SiudpOwow 7 perdaGecwy, and a similar phrase is employed by 
Josephus to describe the arbitrary transference of the highpriest- 
hood (Azz. xii. 9. 7, tro Avotov meobeis, werabetvar Thy Tiny amo 
TAaUTNS THS oikias eis ETEpor). 

We now (vv.!54) get an account of what was meant by od 
KaTa Thy tdéw “Aapwy or érepos (“another,” in the sense of “a 
different”) tepeds in v.'1; Jesus, this tepets xara rv tag MeAxice- 
déx, came from the non-sacerdotal tribe of Judah, not from that 
of Levi. °Ed’ dy is another instance of the extension of this 
metaphorical use of ézi from the Attic dative to the accusative. 
The perfect petéoxnkev may be used in an aoristic sense, like 
€oxnka, Or simply for the sake of assonance with mpocéoyykev, 
and it means no more than perécyev in 214; indeed perécyev is 
read here by P 489. 623%. 1912 arm, as mpocéoyey is (by A C 


VII. 14-17.] THE SUPERIOR PRIESTHOOD 97 


33- 1288) for mpooécyyxev. The conjecture of Erasmus, zpocéo- 
Tykev, is ingenious, but mpooéxew in the sense of “attend” is 
quite classical. The rule referred to in eis fv pudny (e& 7s hvdjs, 
arm ?), Ze. €x pudgjs eis nv (as Lk 10!) xrA. is noted in Josephus, 
Ant, XxX. 10. 1, warpiv éote pndéva tov Oeod tiv apyrepwovvyny 
AapBavew 7 Tov €€ aiparos Tov *Aapavos. No tribe except Levi 
supplied priests. (Mpdédndov in v.!4 is not a LXX term, but 
occurs in this sense in 2 Mac 317 (& dv rpddyAov éyivero) and 
1459, as well as in Judith 8%.) In Zest. Lev? 814 it is predicted 
(cp. Introd. p. xlviii) that Baowreds ex tod “lovda dvacrycerat Kal 
tomoe tepatretay veay: but this is a purely verbal parallel, the 
Bacwrevs is Hyrcanus and the reference is to the Maccabean 
priest-kings who succeed the Aaronic priesthood. *Avatéd\ew is 
a synonym for davicracOa (v.), as in Nu 241, though it is just 
possible that dvaréraAxey is a subtle allusion to the messianic 
title of “AvaroAy in Zec 6!2; in commenting on that verse Philo 
observes (de confus. ling. 14): Todvrov pev yap mpeoBvrarov vidv 6 
Tov dAwv avéretAe maryp. (For tepéwy the abstract equivalent 
iepwotvvys, from v.!%, is substituted by D*° K L.) The title 
6 KUptos ypav is one of the links between the vocabulary of this 
epistle and that of the pastorals (1 Ti 114, 2 Ti 18). As the 
result of all this, what is it that becomes (v.!°) sepicodtepoy 
(for repiradrepws) katddyndov?! The provisional character of the 
levitical priesthood, or the perdfeots voxove? Probably the 
jatter, though the writer would not have distinguished the one 
from the other. Inv. xara thy dpordtyTa linguistically has the 
same sense as ddwpowwpevos (v.®), In v.1® capkivns (for which 
gapkixys is substituted by C° D K W 104. 326. 1175, etc.) hints at 
the contrast which is to be worked out later (in 9114) between 
the external and the inward or "spiritual, the sacerdotal évroAy 
being dismissed as merely capxivy, since it laid down physical 
descent as a requisite for office. Hereditary succession is 
opposed to the inherent personality of the Son(=91*), The dis- 
tinction between capxtxds (= fleshly, with the nature and qualities 
of odpé) and cdpxwos (fleshy, composed of odpé) is blurred in 
Hellenistic Greek of the period, where adjectives in -wos tend to 
take over the sense of those in -txos, and wice versa. In v.17 
paptupetrat (cp. paptupovpevos, v.°) is altered to the active (10!) 
paptupee by CD K L 256. 326. 436. 1175. 1837. 2127 syr™ vg 
arm Chrys. 

The petdQeorts of v.12 is now explained negatively (aérnats) 
and positively (émetoaywyn) in vv.!8 1% *A@érnats (one of his juristic 
metaphors, cp. 97°) yiverat (ze. by the promulgation of Ps 1104) 
mpoayotons (cp. LALA. ill. 247, Ta rpoayovta Wapiopara : mpodyew is 

1 KardénXor is the classical intensive form of 57Aov, used here for the sake 
of assonance with the following xard. 


7 


98 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS _ | VII. 17-19" 


not used by the LXX in this sense of “ fore-going ”) évtoAjs (v.16) 
Sa 16 ads (unemphatic) dobevés Kat dvwhedds (alliteration). 
"Avwhedés iS a Word common in such connexions, e.g. Lp. Arast. 
253, orep avuedts kal ddryewov éoti: Polyb. xi. 25° alndov xat 
avwodedés. The uselessness of the Law lay in its failure to secure 
an adequate forgiveness of sins, without which a real access or 
fellowship (éyytLew 7 06) was impossible ; ob8év éreetwoer, it led 
to no absolute order of communion between men and God, no 
teXelwots. The positive contrast (v.!%) is introduced by the strik- 
ing compound érewwaywyy (with yiverac), a term used by Josephus 
for the replacing of Vashti by Esther (Azz. xi. 6. 2, oBévvve Oat yap 
TO Tpos THY mpoTHpav piAdaropyov Erépas erELDaywy}, Kal TO TpOs eKeEl- 
vnv evvouy arooTMpevov KaTa puKpoV ylyverbat THS cvvovoys) ; there 
is no force here in the ée, as if it meant “ fresh” or ‘ further.” 
The new éAmis is kpetttwv by its effectiveness (618) ; it accomplishes 
what the vépos and its tepwovvy had failed to realize for men, viz. 
a direct and lasting access to God. In what follows the writer 
ceases to use the term éAzis, and concentrates upon the éyyifew 
T@ Oe, since the essence of the éAzis lies in the priesthood and 
sacrifice of Jesus the Son. With this allusion to the xpeirrwy éAzis, 
he really resumes the thought of 61*19; but he has another 
word to say upon the superiority of the Melchizedek priest, and 
in this connexion he recalls another oath of God, viz. at the 
inauguration or consecration mentioned in Ps r1o*, a solemn 
divine oath, which was absent from the ritual of the levitical 
priesthood, and which ratifies the new priesthood of Jesus as 
permanent (vv.?0-22), enabling him to do for men what the levitical 
priests one after another failed to accomplish (vv.?9-®5), 

20 4 better Hope, because tt was not promised apart from anoath. Previous 


priests (ol uév=levitical priests) became priests apart from any oath, ™ but 
he has an oath from Him who said to him, 

‘“* The Lord has sworn, and he will not change his mind, 

thou art a priest for ever.” 


® And this makes Jesus surety for a superior covenant. ** Also, while they (ol 
uév) became priests in large numbers, since death prevents them from continuing 
to serve, ** he holds his priesthood without any successor, since he continues for 
ever. *® Hence for all time he ts able to save those who approach God sph lt 
him, as he ts always living to intercede on thetr behalf. 


The long sentence (vv. 7s) closes with * Ingods in an peichade 
position. After kat xa@’ dcov ob xwpis dpxwpocias, which connect 
(sc. rodro yivera) with ereraywy? Se ehrridos, there is a long 


explanatory parenthesis oi pév yap . . . eis Tov aidva, exactly in 
the literary style of Philo (e.g. guis rer. div. 17, ed’ dcov yap olpat 
ktA,—vovs pev yap... aicOnoi.s—ért tocodrov xrd.). In v.20 


dpxwpoota (oath- taking) i is a neuter plural (cp. Sy//. 59329, OGJS. 
2298") which, like dvrwuooia, has become a feminine singular of 
the first declension, and eioiv yeyovdres is simply. an analytic form 


VII. 20-22.] THE SUPERIOR PRIESTHOOD 99 


of the perfect tense, adopted as more sonorous than yeyovacr. As 
we have already seen (on 618), Philo (de sacrific. 28-29) discusses 
such references to God swearing. ‘Thousands of people, he ob- 
serves, regard an oath as inconsistent with the character of God,who 
requires no witness to his character. ‘‘ Men who are disbelieved 
have recourse to an oath in order to win credence, but God’s mere 
word must be believed (6 dé Geds cat A€ywv tioTds éorww) ; hence, 
his words are in no sense different from oaths, as far as assurance 
goes.” He concludes that the idea of God swearing an oath is 
simply an anthropomorphism which is necessary on account of 
human weakness. Our author takes the OT language in Ps rro# 
more naively, detecting a profound significance in the line épocev 
kUptos kal ov peTapednOyjoetar (in the Hellenistic sense of “ regret ” 
= change his mind). The allusion is, of course, to the levitical 
priests. But Roman readers could understand from their former 
religion how oaths were needful in such a matter. Claudius, 
says Suetonius (Vzt. Claud. 22), “‘in co-optandis per collegia 
sacerdotibus neminem nisi juratus (7.e. that they were suitable) 
nominavit.” 

The superfluous addition of kata thy Ta&tv MeAyiledéx was soon made, 
after els Tov at@va, by x» AD K L P vt SyrPeshbkl boh eth Eus (Dem. iv. 
15. 40), etc. 

Napapévery means to remain in office or serve (a common 
euphemism in the papyri). The priestly office could last in a 
family (cp. Jos. Amz. xi. 8. 2, Tis tepatiKys Tiynns peyiotys ovons Kal 
év TO yever Tapapevovoys), but mortal men (drobvycKovres, v.8) could 
not wapapevewy as priests, whereas (v.74) Jesus remains a perpetual 
tepeds, 31d 76 prevew ( = mdvToTe Lav, v.”°) adtév(Superfluous as in Lk 24 
81a. 76 atrov eivat). *AtapdéBatoy, a legal adjective for “inviolable,” 
is here used in the uncommon sense of non-transferable (boh 
Chrys. ov« éxer duddoxov, Oecumenius, etc. ad.é80xov), as an equiva- 
lent for wy rapaBaivovear cis dAdov, and contrasts Jesus with the 
long succession of the levitical priests (wAcéovés). The passive 
sense of ‘‘not to be infringed” (cp. Justin Martyr, Apo/. i. 43, 
ciuappevyv papev arapdBatov tavryv elvar, where the adjective 
=ineluctabile) or “unbroken” does not suit the context, for 
Jesus had no rivals and the word can hardly refer to the invasion 
of death. Like yeyupvacpeéva in 514, also after éyewv, it has a pre- 
dicative force, marked by the absence of the article. Philo (guts 
rer. atv. heres, 6) finds a similar significance in the etymology of 
kUptos as a divine title: Kvpios pev yap rapa Td Ktpos, 6 87 BéBavov 
early, €ipytat, kat evavTiTyTa af3<Baiov kal axvpov. But our author 
does not discover any basis for the perpetuity of 6 xpos yudyv in 
the etymology of «vpios, and is content (in vv.2-*4) to stress the 
line of the psalm, in order to prove that Jesus guaranteed a superior 
dvabyxy (7.e. order of religious fellowship). “Eyyvos is one of the 


vo 


LOO THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS [VII. 22-25. 


juristic terms (vg, sponsor) which he uses in a general sense ; here 
it is surety” or “pledge.” Acafyjxn is discussed by him later 
on; it isa term put in here as often to excite interest and anticipa- 
tion. How readily éyyuos could be associated with a term like 
adtew (v.25) may be understood from Sir 29 ; 


/ > , Le / 
xXapitas éyyvov py éeriAdby, 
25 Push Sipeeye ee N RAMAL C2 OS 
cOwkey yap THY WuxX7V aUTOD U7rEp Tov. 
3 \ > 4, 3 / c / 
dyada éyyvouv dvarpefer duaptwrds, 
Kal axapiotos év dtavoia éyxaraXciiper puodpevov. 





Our author might have written peoirys here as well as in 8°; he 
prefers éyyvos probably for the sake of assonance with yéyover or 
even éyyiCouev. AS peovreveryv means to vouch for the truth of a 
promise or statement (cp. 6”), so éyyvos means one who vouches 
for the fulfilment of a promise, and therefore is a synonym for 
pecitys here. The conclusion (v.”°) is put in simple and 
effective language. Eis 7 mayteNés is to be taken in the temporal 
sense of the phrase, as in BM iii. 161!! (A.D. 212) ard rod 
viv eis TO mavteXes, being simply a literary variant for mavrore. 
The alternative rendering ‘‘ utterly ” suits Lk 13" better than this 
passage. This full and final tepwodvn of Jesus is the kpetrrwv éXris 
(v.19), the reAeéwors which the levitical priesthood failed to supply, 
a perfect access to God’s Presence. His intercession (évrvyxdvew, 
sc. Oe as in Ro 8% ds Kat évrvyxaver brép Hpdv) has red blood in 
it, unlike Philo’s conception, e.g. in Vit. Afos. iii. 14, dvayKatov yap 
Hv tov tepwpuevov (the highpriest) t@ Tod Kocpov watpi rapaxAyTw 
xpno bar reAecoTaTw THY apeTHy vid (7.2. the Logos) wpds Te duvnoriav 
dpapypatwv Kal xopnyiav apbovuratwv dyaby, and in guis rer. div. 
42, where the Logos is ixérns tov @vytod Kypaivovtos adel mpos TO 
ddOaprov rapa dé Td hivre mpos eveAmioriav TOU pHTore Tov tAew Oeov 
mepioety TO tovov epyov. The function of intercession in heaven for 
the People, which originally (see p. 37) was the prerogative of 
Michael the angelic guardian of Israel, or generally of angels (see 
on 1!4), is thus transferred to Jesus, to One who is no mere angel 
but who has sacrificed himself for the People. The author 
deliberately excludes any other mediator or semi-mediator in the 
heavenly sphere (see p. xxxix). 

A triumphant little summary (vv.7%?8) now rounds off the 
argument of 61972 ; 

26 Such was the highpriest for us, saintly, innocent, unstained, far from 
all contact with the sinful, lifted high above the heavens, ™ one who has no 
need, like yonder highpriests, day by day to offer sacrifices first for their own 
sins and then for (the preposition is omitted as in Ac 2618) those of the People— 
he did that once for all in offering up himself. ™* For the Law appoints 


human beings tn thetr weakness to the priesthood ; but the word of the Oath 
{which came after the Law) appoints a Son who ts made perfect for ever. 


VII. 26. | JESUS AS PRIEST IOI 


The text of this paragraph has only a few variants, none of any import- 
ance. After jptiv in v.** cai is added by A B D 1739 syrPesh hkl Eusebius 
(‘* was exactly the one for us”). In v.?” it makes no difference to the sense 
whether mpocevéyxas (8 A W 33. 256. 436. 442. 1837. 2004. 2127 arm Cyr.) 
or aveveykas (BC D K L P etc. Chrys.) is read; the latter may have been 
suggested by avadépetv, or mpocevéykas may have appealed to later scribes as 
the more usual and technical term in the epistle. The technical distinction 
between a@vadépew (action of people) and mpocgépew (action of the priest) 
had long been blurred ; both verbs mean what we mean by “offer up” or 
‘* sacrifice.” In v.28 the original tepe?s (D* 1 r vg) was soon changed (to con- 
form with d&pxuepets in v.*") into dpxvepets. The reason why tepeds and 
iepets have been used in 7!* is that Melchizedek was called iepevs, not 
dpxvepevs. Once the category is levitical, the interchange of dpy:epevs and 
tepevs becomes natural. 


The words tovodtos yap uty empemev (another daring use of 
expemev, Cp. 21) dpxrepeds (v.26) might be bracketed as one of 
the author’s parentheses, in which case éotos xrA. would carry on 
mwdvtote Lav... adtav. But ds in Greek often follows totodtos, 
and the usual construction is quite satisfactory. [dp is intensive, 
as often. It is generally misleading to parse a rhapsody, but there 
is a certain sequence of thought in oovos xrA., where the positive 
adjective dcvos is followed by two negative terms in alliteration 
(Gkakos, duiaytos), and xexwpiopevos ard Tay &paptwdGv is further 
defined by SndAdtepos t&v odpavdy yevspevos (the same idea as in 
414 dveAnAvOdra tots ovpavovs). He is dcvos, pious or saintly 
(cp. LRE. vi. 743), in virtue of qualities like his reverence, 
obedience, faith, loyalty, and humility, already noted. “Akakos 
is innocent (as in Job 8”, Jer 111%), one of the LXX equivalents 
for OM or OVA, not simply = devoid of evil feeling towards men; 
like dplavtos, it denotes a character xwpis duaprias. *Apiovtos is 
used of the untainted Isis in OP. 1380 (é& Ildvrw dpiavros). 
The language may be intended to suggest a contrast between 
the deep ethical purity of Jesus and the ritual purity of the 
levitical highpriest, who had to take extreme precautions against 
outward defilement (cp. Lv 211!°15 for the regulations, and the 
details in Josephus, Avzé. ili. 12. 2, wa wovov dé repli Tas iepovpyias 
kaapovs civar, orrovddley S€ Kal repi THY abtav diaitay, ws adtiy 
dpeumrrov evar’ Kal Ova tavrnv tiv airiay, ol THY lepatiKyy oToArV 
hopowvres dwwpor Te eiot Kai wept mdvTa Kafapol Kal vypdAror), and 
had to avoid human contact for seven days before the ceremony 
of atonement-day. ‘The next two phrases go together. Kexwpuo- 
pévos amd Tay dpapTwdéy is intelligible in the light of 978; Jesus 
has dzaé sacrificed himself for the sins of men, and in that sense 
his connexion with duaprwAof is done. He is no levitical high- 
priest who is in daily contact with them, and therefore obliged 
to sacrifice repeatedly. Hence the writer at once adds (v.?”) a 
word to explain and expand this pregnant thought; the sphere 
in which Jesus now lives (6nAdrepos xrA.) is not one in which, 


102 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS [VII. 27-28. 


as on earth, he had to suffer the contagion or the hostility of | 
dpaptwrot (12) and to die for human sins. 


‘“‘He has outsoared the shadow of our night; 
Envy and calumny and hate and pain... 
Can touch him not and torture not again; 
From the contagion of the world’s slow stain 
He is secure.” 


This is vital! to the sympathy and intercession of Jesus; it is 
in virtue of this position before God that he aids his people, 
as teredewwpuevos, and therefore able to do all for them. His 
priesthood is, in modern phrase, absolute. As eternal dpxvepeds 
in the supreme sense, and as no longer in daily contact with 
sinners, Jesus is far above the routine ministry of the levitical 
apxtepets. The writer blends loosely in his description (v.?’) the 
annual sacrifice of the highpriest on atonement-day (to which 
he has already referred in 5°) and the daily sacrifices offered by 
priests. Strictly speaking the dpyepets did not require to offer 
sacrifices xa’ 7u¢pav, and the accurate phrase would have been xar’ 
eviautrov. According to Lv 619-8 the highpriest had indeed to offer 
a cereal offering morning and evening ; but the text is uncertain, 
for it is to be offered both on the day of his consecration and 
also 61a zravros. Besides, this section was not in the LXX text 
of A, so that the writer of Hebrews did not know of it. Neither 
had he any knowledge of the later Jewish ritual, according to 
which the highpriest did offer this offering twice a day. 
Possibly, however, his expression here was suggested by Philo’s 
statement about this offering, viz. that the highpriest did offer a 
daily sacrifice (guts rer. div. 36: tas evdeAcxets Ovoias . . . Hv TE 
brép EavtGy ot iepeis rporpéepovar THS TeuiddrAews Kal THY trép TOU 
eOvous tav Sdvetv duvav, de spec. leg. ili. 23, 6 dpxvepeds . . . edyas 
dé kal Ovoias teAGY Kal Exdotnv Hyépav). It is true that this 
offering bwép éautav was not a sin-offering, only an offering of 
cereals ; still it was reckoned a @voia, and in Sir 4514 it is counted 
as such. Toéto ydp éwotyoev refers then to his sacrifice for sins 
(978), not, of course, including any sins of his own (see on 58); 
it means birép Tav dpaptiv Tob hao’, and the writer could afford 
to be technically inexact in his parallelism without fear of being 
misunderstood. ‘‘Jesus offered his sacrifice,” ‘Jesus did all 
that a highpriest has to do,”—this was what he intended. The 
Greek fathers rightly referred todto to émeita t&v tod aod, as if 
the writer meant ‘‘¢/zs, not that mpdtepov.” It is doubtful if he 
had such a sharp distinction in his mind, but when he wrote todto 


1 Thus Philo quotes (de “ug. 12) with enthusiasm what Plato says in the 
Theatetus ; odr dmodéoOa Ta kaxd Svvardv—idrevaytiov ydp Te TE ayab@ det 
elvar dvdyxn—otre év Delos adra idpicAat 


VII. 28. | THE SACRIFICE OF JESUS 103 


he was thinking of tév rod Aaod, and of that alone. An effort 
is sometimes made to evade this interpretation by confining 
ka Huepay to ds odk €xet and understanding ‘‘yearly” after 
ot dpxtepets, as if the idea were that Christ’s daily intercession 
required no daily sacrifice like the annual sacrifice on atonement- 
day. But, as the text stands, dvdykny is knit to xa’ 7yépav, and 
these words must all be taken along with domep ot dpxtepets 
(€xover). 


Be ihe the common assurance of the votaries of Serapis, ¢. £: BCU. 


ae peee 


ii. 385 (ii/ili A.D.), TO mpoockivnud cov Tol® Kar’ Exdorny hucpay Tapa TY Kuply 
Dapamde kal rots cvvvéors Geots. 

A deep impression is made by the words éaurév dvevéyxas, 
“pro nobis tibi uictor et uictima, et ideo uictor, quia uictima, 
pro nobis tibi sacerdos et sacrificium, et ideo sacerdos, quia 
sacrificium” (Aug. Conf. x. 43). What is meant by this the 
writer holds over till he reaches the question of the sacrifice of 
Jesus as dpxtepeds (9). As usual, he prepares the way for a 
further idea by dropping an enigmatic allusion to it. Meantime 
(v.°8) a general statement sums up the argument. Ka8iornow is 
used as in 1 Mac. 10”? (cesorasensy TE OHMLEpOV ApxLepea Tov 
€vovs cov), and doGéveray recalls 52 (zepixerrar dobéverav), in the 
special sense that such weakness involved a sacrifice for one’s 
personal sins (irép tév idiwy duapridv). Whereas Jesus the Son 
of God (as opposed to dvOpwrovs aobeveis) was appointed by a 
divine order which superseded the Law (era Tov vonov = vy.1!-19), 
and appointed as one who was Tete\etwpévos (in the sense of 21°) 
eis Tov aid@va. It is implied that he was appointed dpxuepeds, 
between which and fepevs there is no difference. 

The writer now picks up the thought (722) of the superior 
S.ia0ykn which Jesus as dpxtepeds in the eternal oxnvy or 
sanctuary mediates for the People. This forms the transition 
between the discussion of the priesthood (5-8) and the sacrifice 
of Jesus (g'-10!”). The absolute sacrifice offered by Jesus as 
the absolute priest (vv.!°) ratifies the new dva0jxn which has 
superseded the old (vv.7-!) with its imperfect sacrifices. 

1 The point of all this ts, we do have such a highpriest, one who ts ‘* seated 
at the right hand” of the throne of Majesty (see 1*) im the heavens, 
2 and who offictates in the sanctuary or ‘‘true tabernacle set up by the Lord ‘ 
and not by man. * Now, as every highpriest is appointed to offer gifts and 
sacrifices, he too must have something to offer. ‘Were he on earth, he 
would not be a priest at all, for there are priests already to offer the gifts 
prescribed by Law (© men who serve a mere outline and shadow of the 
heavenly—as Moses was instructed when he was about to execute the building 
of the tabernacle: ‘‘ see,” God said, ‘‘ that (sc. 8rws) you make everything 
on the pattern ici: Sib upon the mountain”). °® As it is, however, the 


divine service he has obtained ts supertor, owing to the fact that he mediates 
a supertor covenant, enacted with superior promises. 


The terseness of the clause jv éanftev 6 Kipios, odk avOpwos (v.?) is 


104 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS [VIII.1, 2. 


spoiled by the insertion of kat before obx (AK LP vg boh syr arm eth 
Cosm.). In v.4 ov becomes ydp in D¢ K L syr>*! arm Chrys. Theod., and 
a similar group of authorities add lepéwy after évrwv. Tév is prefixed 
needlessly to véuov by 8 DK LP Chrys. Dam. to conform to the usage in 
75 922; but the sense is really unaffected, for the only legal regulation con- 
ceivable is that of the Law. In v.® viv and vuvt (97%) are both attested ; 
the former is more common in the papyri. The Hellenistic (from Aristotle 
onwards) form rérevxev (X° B D° 5. 226. 467. 623. 920. 927. 1311. 1827. 1836. 
1873. 2004. 2143, etc.: or téruxev, 8° A D* K L) has been corrected in PV 
6. 33. 1908 Orig. to the Attic rervxnxev. Before xpetttovds, kat is omitted 
by D* 69. 436. 462 arm Thdt. 

Kedédaroy (“the pith,” Coverdale), which is nominative 
absolute, is used as in Cic. ad Aftic. v. 18: “et multa, immo 
omnia, quorum xepadaovr,” etc., Dem. xili. 36: €ore 37, & advdpes 
"A@nvaiot, Keparaov ardvtwy Tov cipnuevwy (at the close of a 
speech) ; Musonius (ed. Hense, 67 f.) Biov kat yevécews raidwy 
Kowwviay Kepadaov civat ydpov, etc. The word in this sense is 
common throughout literature and the more colloquial papyri, 
here with él tots Neyouevors (concerning what has been said). 
In passing from the intricate argument about the Melchizedek 
priesthood, which is now dropped, the writer disentangles the 
salient and central truth of the discussion, in order to continue 
his exposition of Jesus as highpriest. ‘Such, I have said, was the 
dpxtepevs for us, and such is the dpytepevs we have—One who is 
enthroned, év tots odpavots, next to God himself.” While Philo 
spiritualizes the highpriesthood, not unlike Paul (Ro 12!*), by 
arguing that devotion to God is the real highpriesthood (ro yap 
Geparrevtixov yévos dvabnud éorte Oeodv, tepdyevov tiv pmeyadnv 
dpxiepwovvynv aiTd wove, de Fug. 7), our author sees its essential 
functions transcended by Jesus in the spiritual order. 

The phrase in v.? tav dytwv Nevtoupyds, offers two points of 
interest. First, the linguistic form Aecrovpyés. The e form 
stands between the older y or my, which waned apparently from 
the third cent. B.c., and the later ce form; “ Aeroupyds sim. socios 
habet omnium temporum papyros praeter perpaucas recentiores 
quae sacris fere cum libris conspirantes Arovpyos Acroupyia 
scribunt” (Cronert, Memoria Graeca Hercul. 39). Then, the 
meaning of rév adyiwv. Philo has the phrase, in Leg. Ad/eg. ili. 46, 
To.ovtos O€ 0 GeparrevTis Kai AeToupyos TOV aylwv, where Tv dyiwv 
means “‘sacred things,” as in de /ug. 17, where the Levites are 
described as priests ois 7) t@v dyiwv dvaxetrar Aerovpyia. This 
might be the meaning here. But the writer uses ra ayia else- 
where (9§% 1o!® 131!) of “the sanctuary,” a rendering favoured 
by the context. By ra dyva he means, as often in the LXX, the 
sanctuary in general, without any reference to the distinction 
(cp. 928) between the outer and the inner shrine. The LXX 
avoids the pagan term tepov in this connexion, though 76 dyrov 
itself was already in use among ethnic writers (e.g. the edict of 


VIII. 2-5. | THE SACRIFICE OF JESUS 105 


Ptolemy U1., kat xafidptoo év tov dyiw.= “in sacrario templi,” 
Dittenberger, OGZS. 56°"). Itis here defined (xai epexegetic) as 
the true or real oxynvh, Hv! emngev 6 KUptos (a reminiscence of Nu 
24° oxnval as éernfev Kipuos, and of Ex 337 kai AaBov Mwvojs tiv 
oKynviv avrov érnfev). The reality and authenticity of the writer’s 
faith come out in a term like d&\nOivds. What he means by it 
he will explain in a moment (v.°). Meanwhile he turns to the 
Nettoupyla of Jesus in this ideal sanctuary. This dpyxuepeds of 
ours, in his vocation (v.°, cp. 51), must have (dvaykatov, sc. éotiv) 
some sacrifice to present before God, though what this offering is, 
the writer does not definitely say, even later in 974. The analogy 
of a highpriest carrying the blood of an animal inside.the sacred 
shrine had its obvious limitations, for Jesus was both dpyrepevs 
and offering, by his self-sacrifice. Mpocevéyxy is the Hellenistic 
aorist subjunctive, where classical Greek would have employed 
a future indicative (Radermacher, 138). The writer proceeds 
to argue that this Netroupyla is far superior to the levitical cultus 
(vv.44). Even in the heavenly sanctuary there must be sacrifice 
of some kind—for sacrifice is essential to communion, in his 
view. It is not a sacrifice according to the levitical ritual; 
indeed Jesus on this level would not be in levitical orders at all. 
But so far from that being any drawback or disqualification to 
our dpxtepeds, it is a proof of his superiority, for the bible itself 
indicates that the levitical cultus is only an inferior copy of the 
heavenly order to which Jesus belongs. 

Instead of contrasting at this point (v.4) 74 8@pa (sacrifices, 
as in 114) of the levitical priests with the spiritual sacrifice of 
Jesus, he hints that the mere fact of these sacrifices being made 
émt ys is a proof of their inferiority. This is put into a paren- 
thesis (v.°); but, though a grammatical aside, it contains one of 
the writer’s fundamental ideas about religion (Eusebius, in Praep. 
Evang. xii. 19, after quoting He 8°, refers to the similar Platonic 
view in the sixth book of the Republic). Such priests (otrwes, 
the simple relative as in 9? 10% !! 125) Xatpedouor (with dative as 
in 13!°) Grodelypart kal okid TO éroupaviwy (cp. 923). “Yzodevyya 
here as in 9” is a mere outline or copy (the only analogous 
instance in the LXX being Ezk 42! 76 idderypa. Tod olkov) ; the 
phrase is practically a hendiadys for ‘‘a shadowy outline,” a 
second-hand, inferior reproduction. The proof of this is given 
in a reference to Ex 2519: Kabas Kkexpnpdtiota. Mwuvofs— 
xpypati~w,”? as often in the LXX and the papyri, of divine 

1 #v is not assimilated, though #s might have been written ; the practice 
varied (cp. ¢g. Dt 5°! év ry yn ty eyo didwut, and 12) & TH yn n Kupsos 
dldworr), 

2 Passively in the NT in Ac 10”, but the exact parallel is in Josephus, 


Ant. iii. 8. 8, Mwiiofjs . . . els Thy oxnvijy elowwy éxpnuarlfero mepl dv édetro 
mapa Tov Geod. 


106 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS [ VIII. 5. 


revelations as well as of royal instructions—pédAdAwv émutedety thy 
oxnvyy. The subject of the grou is God, understood from 
kexpnpdtiorat, and the ydp! introduces the quotation, in which 
the writer, following Philo (Zeg. Adleg. iil. 33), as probably codex 
Ambrosianus (F) of the LXX followed him, adds mdvta. He 
also substitutes 8etxOévta for dederyyévov, which Philo keeps 
(kara 7d wapadetypa TO Sederypevov Got év TO Oper TavTa Toijoets), and 
retains the LXX rumov (like Stephen in Ac 7**). The idea was 
current in Alexandrian Judaism, under the influence of Platonism, 
that this oxyvj on earth had been but a reproduction of the 
pre-existent heavenly sanctuary. Thus the author of Wisdom 
makes Solomon remind God that he had been told to build the | 
temple (vdov . .. Kai Q@vovacrnpiov) as pipnua oKxnvyns ayias HV 
mpoytoipwacas am apxyns (9°), where oxyvy ayia is plainly the 
heavenly sanctuary as the eternal archetype. This idealism > 
determines the thought of our writer (see Introd. pp. xxxif.). 
Above the shows and shadows of material things he sees the 
real order of being, and it is most real to him on account of 
Jesus being there, for the entire relationship between God and 
man depends upon this function and vocation of-Jesus in the 
eternal sanctuary. 


Such ideas were not unknown in other circles. Seneca (Zf. Iviii. 18-19) 
had just explained to Lucilius that the Platonic ideas were ‘‘ what all visible 
things were created from, and what formed the pattern for all things,” 
quoting the Parmenides, 132 D, to prove that the Platonic idea was the ever- 
lasting pattern of all things in nature. The metaphor is more than once used 
by Cicero, e.g. Zusc. iil. 2. 3, and in de Officizs, iii. 17, where he writes: ‘‘ We 
have no real and life-like (solidam et expressam effigiem) likeness of real law 
and genuine justice ; all we enjoy is shadow and sketch (umbra et imaginibus). 
Would that we were true even to these! For they are taken from the 
excellent patterns provided by nature and truth.” But our author’s thought 
is deeper. In the contemporary Syriac Apocalypse of Baruch the idea of 
Ex 25% is developed into the thought that the heavenly Jerusalem was also 
revealed to Moses along with the patterns of the oxnv7 and its utensils (4*) ; 
God also showed Moses ‘‘ the pattern of Zion and its measures, in the pattern 
of which the sanctuary of the present time was to be made” (Charles’ tr.). 
The origin of this notion is very ancient; it goes back to Sumerian sources, 
for Gudea the prince-priest of Lagash (¢c. 3000 B.C.) receives in a vision the 
plan of the temple which he is commanded to build (cp. A. Jeremias, 
Babylonisches im NT, pp. 62f.). It is to this fundamental conception that 
the author of IIpds ‘EBpaious recurs, only to elaborate it in an altogether new 
form, which went far beyond Philo. Philo’s argument (Leg. Ad/eg. iii. 33), 
on this very verse of Exodus, is that Bezaleel only constructed an imitation 
(utunuara) of ra dpxéruta given to Moses; the latter was called up to the 
mountain to receive the direct idea of God, whereas the former worked 
simply dd oxids TOv yevoudvwv. In de Plant. 6 he observes that the very 
name of Bezaleel ($x byz) means ‘‘one who works in shadows” (év oxtais 
movav); in De Sommnits, i. 35, he defines it as ‘in the shadow of God,” and 
again contrasts Bezaleel with Moses: 6 mév ola cxids breypadero, 6 5’ ob oxids, 


1 Put before gno1, because the point is not that the oracle was given, but 
what the oracle contained. , 


VIII. 6.] THE SUPERIOR COVENANT 107 


avras 6¢ ras dpxerUmous ednmotpye: pices. In Vet. Mos. iii. 3 he argues that 
in building the oxnv7 Moses designed to produce kaOdmep am’ dapxerirrou 
ypapns Kal vonrdv mapaderyudrwv alcOnra pienuata ... 6 wey ody rvtros 
To0 mapadelyparos éverppayifero TH diavolg Tov mpopijrov ... Td 0 dmoré- 
Aecua pds Tov TUrov ednutoupyeEtro. 


He then continues (v.® viv 8é, logical as in 28 926, answering 
to et pév in v.4) the thought of Christ’s superior ettoupyia by 
describing him again (cp. 7?) in connexion with the superior 
S.aOHxyn, and using now not éyyvos but pectryns. Meoirys (see on 
Gal 3!°) commonly means an arbitrator (e.g. Job 9%, Rein. P. 44° 
[A.D. 104] 6 kataoraGeis Kpiryjs pecitys) or intermediary in some 
civil transaction (OP. 1298!) ; but this writer’s use of it, always in 
connexion with 81a@jxy (915 1274)! and always as a description 
of Jesus (as in 1 Ti 25), implies that it is practically (see on 722) 
a synonym for éyyuos. Indeed, linguistically, it is a Hellenistic 
equivalent for the Attic peréyyvos, and in Diod. Siculus, iv. 54 
(rodrov yap peoityny yeyovora Tov Sporoyov év Kodxors ernyyeAPau 
BonOycev aity tapacrovdovpervy), its meaning corresponds to that 
of €yyvos. ‘The sense is plain, even before the writer develops 
his ideas about the new dcaOyx«n, for, whenever the idea of re- 
conciliation emerges, terms like peotrys and peourevery are natural. 
Meoirys kai duadAaxtys is Philo’s phrase? for Moses (Vit. Mos. 
ji. 19), And as a dafyxy was a gracious order of religious 
fellowship, inaugurated upon some historical occasion by sacrifice, 
it was natural to speak of Jesus as the One who mediated this 
new daOyxn of Christianity. He gave it (Theophyl. peoirys xat 
dérns) ; he it was who realized it for men and who maintains it 
for men. All that the writer has to say meantime about the 
diabyxn is that it has been enacted (v.®) émt kpetttoow émayyeXlats. 
This passive use of vowoetetv is not unexampled ; cf. eg. OGZS. 
493° (ii A.D.) Kal Tatra pev tyety dpOds Kai Kad@s . . . vevopo- 
GernoOw. It 's implied, of course, that God is 6 vopoGeray (as in 
LXX Ps 837). What the ‘ better promises ” are, he now proceeds 
to explain, by a contrast between their da04xn and its predecessor. 
The superiority of the new d:a6yxy is shown by the fact that God 
thereby superseded the éca0yxy with which the levitical cultus 
was bound up; the writer quotes an oracle from Jeremiah, 
again laying stress on the fact that it came after the older d:aOyKy 
(vv.718), and enumerating its promises ascontained in a new d:aOnxy, 


1In these two latter passages, at least, there may be an allusion to the 
contemporary description of Moses as ‘‘ mediator of the covenant” (‘‘ arbiter 
testamenti,” Ass. A/osts, i. 14). The writer does not contrast Jesus with 
Michael, who was the great angelic mediator in some circles of Jewish piety 
(cp. Jub 1%, Test. Dan 6). 

2 Josephus (Am¢. xvi. 2. 2) says that Herod rév rap ’Ayplrra ricly 
émifnroupévav peoitys fv, and that his influence moved mpds ras evepyeotas 
ob Bpadivovra rov Aypirmav. “Idcedor wev yap adrov SindAagev dpyifdpevor. 


108 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS (WII. y= 


1 For tf that first covenant had been faultless, there would have ia no 
occasion for a second. ® Whereas God does find fault with the people of that 
covenant, when he says: 

‘* The day ts coming, satth the Lord, 
when I will conclude a new covenant with the house of Israel and with 
the house of Judah. 
9 Tt will not be on the lines of the covenant I made with their father Fh 
on the day when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt's 
Lana ; 
for they would not hold to my covenant, 
so L left them alone, saith the Lord. 
10 This zs the covenant I will make with the house of Israel when that 
(‘the day” of v.8) day comes, saith the Lord ; 
ZT will set my laws within their mind, 
inscribing them upon thetr hearts ; 
I will be a God (eis Gedy, z.é. all that men can expect a God to be) ¢o 
them, 
and they shall be a People to me ; 
1 one citizen will no longer teach his fellow, 
one man wzll no longer teach his brother ror adekpov atrov, z.é. one 
another, Ex 107), 
saying, “* Know the Lord.” 
for all shall know me, low and high together. 
12 7 will be merciful to their tniqguitzes, 
and remember thetr sins no more. 

13 By saying “a new covenant,” he antiquates the first. And whatever ts 

antiquated and aged ts on the verge of vanishing. 


The contents of the prediction of a kawh 8:a8qKn by God, 
and the very fact that such was necessary, prove the defectiveness 
of the first da6yxn. The writer is struck by the mention of a 
new dvabyxn even in the OT itself, and he now explains the 
significance of this. As for 1 mpdty (sc. duabyjxn) éxeivy, ei . . . 
Gpepmros (if no fault could have been found with it), obk éy 
Seutépas éLntetto témos. Aeutépas is replaced by érépas in B* (so 
B. Weiss, Blass) ; but, while érepos could follow mp&ros (Mt 21°), 
devTepos is the term chosen in 10%, and B* is far too slender 
evidence by itself. Zyrtetv TémOv is one of those idiomatic phrases, 
like etpely rorov and Aafety térov, of which the writer was fond. 
The force of the ydp after pepdpduevos is: ‘and there was occasion 
for a second d:afyxn, the first was not dpepmros, since,” etc. It 
need make little or no difference to the sense whether we read 
autois (N° B D° L 6. 38. 88. 104. 256. 436. 467. 999. 1311. 1319. 
1739. 1837.1845. 1912. 2004. 2127 Origen) or avrovs (N* A D* K P 
W 33 vg arm), for peudouevos can take a dative as well as 
an accusative (cf. Arist. AAez. 1. 6. 24, Kopw6iors & ob péuderar 7d 
“Tov: Aesch. Prom. 63, ovdeis évdixws éuwarro por) in the sense of 

*€censuring”’ or “ finding fault with,” and peppoprevos naturally ROG 
with atrots or atrovs. The objection to taking adtots with Aéyer ! 


1 weudduevos is then ‘f by way of censure,” and some think the writer 
purposely avoided adding av’rjv. Which, in view of what he says in v.}, is 
doubtful ; besides, he has just said that the former diabnkn was not d&meumros. 


VIII. 8. | THE ORACLE OF JEREMIAH 109 


is that the quotation is not addressed directly to the people, 
but spoken at large. Thus the parallel from 2 Mac 2? (peppa- 
pevos avrots elev) 1s not decisive, and the vg is probably correct 
in rendering ‘“vituperans enim eos dicit.” The context ex- 
plains here as in 48 and 1178 who are meant by airovs. The 
real interest of the writer in this Jeremianic oracle is shown when 
he returns to it in 101618; what arrests him is the promise of a 
free, full pardon at the close. But he quotes it at length, partly 
because it did imply the supersession of the older dia6yxn and 
partly because it contained high promises (vv.!1?), higher than 
had yet been given to the People. No doubt it also contains a 
warning (v.°), like the text from the g5th psalm (3), but this is 
not why he recites it (see p. xl). 

The text of Jer 38°!-34 (3151-84) as he read it in his bible (¢.e. 
in A) ran thus: 


>. \ e / ” 14 , 
idod yuepar epxovTa, A€yer Kupuos, 
\ Py Ay A »” "Tt nv \ A > al 50 6 An 
kal diabyoopar TO otkw ‘IopanA Kat T@ oikw ‘Iovda diabyKyv 
/ 
KQLVV, 

3 ‘\ LN , aA , an , SA 
ov kata THv dwaOyKny Hv Suefeunv Tots TaTpacw avTov 
év nuépa ertAaBopevov pov THs xeEtpos adrav eEayayeiv adrovs éx 

yns Aiytirron, 
e task Keg > 7 > A 8 6% 
STL AUTO. ovK evepervay ev TH diaOyKy pov, 

> + > / 3 n A , 

Kayo NuéeX\noa avTav, dyno Kupvos. 

g 97 e , a 7 fal 4 > , 
6te attn 7 StabyKyn Hv Siabjoopa TO oixw “Iopanr 
peTa TAs Huepas exelvas, Pyow Kipvos, 
did0vs vopovs pov eis THY Sidvoray airy 

A , lal 
Kal érypayw avtovs émi Tas Kapdias ait, 
Kal owopat avTous 
\ A 
Kal €gopat adrots eis Oedv. 
\ 2 Nae , > / 
Kal avTol e€govTat por eis Aaov. 

\ > ‘\ 1 8 5 Z ¢ \ > \ 3 A 
kai ov py! diddagwow EexacTos Tov adeAov avrod 

, ¢ \ A aA 
Kal ExagTos TOV TANnTLov aiTod éywv' yvOOu Tov Kuproy, 
oT. mavtes idyoovow pe 
Grd pKpov ews peyadov airar, 

9 an aA 
dtu tXews Evopar Tats adixlats avTov 
Kal TOV GpapTiav aiTav ov py pvnocOd ert. 


Our author follows as usual the text of A upon the whole (e.9. Aéyec tor 
onoly in v.*!, kayo in v.8*, the omission of mou after duabjxn and of ddcw 
after didovs in v.**, od uh StddEwowy for ov diddEovow in v.*4 and the omission 
of avr after uxpod), but substitutes ouvrehéow éml rdv olkov (bis) for d1a6%- 
gouat TH olkw in v.*1, reads Aéyer for pyolv in v.* and v.%, alters dvebéunvy 
into ézolnoa (Q*), and follows B in reading kal éml x. a’r&v before the verb 
(v.*3), and moXirny .  . ddedpdv in v.*4, as well as in omitting cal dy. adrovs 
(A x) in the former verse; in v.*4 he reads eldjcovcw (x Q) instead of 





1 9d yw only occurs in Hebrews in quotations (here, 10!7 13°); out of 
about ninety-six occurrences in the NT, only eight are with the future. 


IIo THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS [ VIII. 8-10. 


idjoovow, the forms of oféa and eldov being repeatedly confused (cp. Thackeray, 
278). These minor changes may be partly due to the fact that he is quoting 
from memory. In some cases his own text has been conformed to other 
versions of the LXX; eg. A D ¥ boh restore pov in v.19, x* K vg Clem. 
Chrys. read xapdlav (with 8 in LXX), though the singular! is plainly a con- 
formation to dlavowy (‘* Fiir den Plural sprechen ausser A D'L noch B, 
wo nur das C in € verschrieben und daraus emt xapdia eavrwy geworden ist, 
und P, wo der Dat. in den Acc. verwandelt,” B. Weiss in Zexte u. Unter- 
suchungen, xiv. 3. 16, 55); B W arm revive the LXX (B) variant ypdww ; the 
LXX (Q) variant wAngiov is substituted for woAlrnv by P vg syrb*! eth 38. 
206. 218. 226. 257. 547. 642. 1288. 1311. 1912, etc. Cyril, and the LXX 
(B Q 8) at’rdy restored after ucxpod by D° L syr boh eth, etc. On the other 
hand, a trait like the reading émoiyoa in the LXX text of Q* may be due to the 
influence of Hebrews itself. The addition of kal rév avourdy adrdy after or 
before kal r&v duapridv airav in v.!* is a homiletic gloss from 10’, though 
strongly entrenched in 8 AC DK LP W6. 104. 326, etc. vg pesh arm Clem. 


Luvtehéow Srabyxny, a literary LXX variant for roujow diabyxny, 
recalls the phrase ovvreAdoar diabyxyy (Jer 418 (348)), and, as 124 
(véas S:a0nxyns) shows, the writer draws no distinction between 
xaos and véos (v.8). In v.® the genitive absolute’ (émAaBopevou 
pou) after ipépa, instead of ev 7 éreAaBduyy (as Justin correctly 
puts it, Déad. xi.), is a Hellenistic innovation, due here to trans- 
lation, but paralleled in Bar 278 év npépa évretAapevov cov ava) ; 
in dtu (causal only here and in v.!°) . . . évéwewav, the latter is our 
“‘abide by,” in the sense of obey or practise, exactly as in 
Isokrates, xara tdv Xodictav, 20: ols ei Tis emt Tdv rpagewy 
éupeiverey. Bengel has a crisp comment on adrot . . . xadye here 
and on écopat.. . kat adrot (“correlata . . . sed ratione inversa ; 
populus fecerat initium tollendi foederis prius, in novo omnia et 
incipit et perficit Deus”); and, as it happens, there is a dramatic 
contrast between jpéAnoa here and the only other use of the 
verb in this epistle (2°). In v.19 880us, by the omission of daca, 
is left hanging in the air; but (cp. Moulton, 222) such participles 
could be taken as finite verbs in popular Greek of the period 
(cp. ¢.g. xeporovnbets in 2 Co 81%). The xawh S:a8qxy is to be 
on entirely fresh lines, not a mere revival of the past; it is to 
realize a knowledge of God which is inward and intuitive 
(vy.10-11), There is significance in the promise, kat égouar atrots 

. els Nady. A dvabyxy was always between God and his 
people, and this had been the object even of the former dcabyxn 
(Ex. 67); now it is to be realized at last. Philo’s sentence 
(even if we are sluggish, however, He is not sluggish about 
taking to Himself those who are fit for His service ; for He says, 
‘I will take you to be a people for myself, and I will be your 
God,’” De Sacrif. Abelis et Caint, 26) is an apt comment; but 
our author, who sees the new dca6y«7y fulfilled in Christianity, has 


1 That él takes the accusative here is shown by 10'8; xapdlas cannot be 
the genitive singular alongside of an accusative, 


VIII. 10-13. | OLD AND NEW cant 


his own views about how such a promise and purpose was 
attainable, for while the oracle ignores the sacrificial ritual 
altogether, he cannot conceive any pardon apart from sacrifice, 
nor any dvafyxyn apart from a basal sacrifice. These ideas he is 
to develop in his next paragraphs, for it is the closing promise 
of pardon! which is to him the supreme boon. Meanwhile, 
before passing on to explain how this had been mediated by 
Jesus, he (v.18) drives home the truth of the contrast between old 
and new (see Introd., p. xxxix). Ev 1@ Néyew (same construc- 
tion as in 2°)—when the word kawhy (sc. dvabyxnv) was pro- 
nounced, it sealed the doom of the old daéyKy. Nadadw 
(wewadatwxe) in this transitive sense (“he hath abrogat,” Tyndale) 
is known to the LXX (Job 95, La 34, both times of God in 
action); ynpdoxew is practically equivalent to papatverOa, and 
implies decay (see Wilamowitz on Eur. Herak/es, 1223). The 
two words éyyds (as in 6°) &paviopod, at the end of the paragraph, 
sound like the notes of a knell, though they have no contem- 
porary reference ; the writer simply means that the end of the old 
duabyxyn was at hand (p. xxii). The new would soon follow, as it 
had done év vid (11). The verb adavifeww (-erOat) is applied to legis- 
lation (e.g., Lysias, 868, tiv tuérepay vopobectay adavilovras) in 
the sense of abolition, lapsing or falling into desuetude, Dion. 
Hal. Ant. iii. 178, ds (ze. Numa’s laws) dgancOjvar ovwvéByn ro 
xpovw, the opposite of ddavilew being ypadew (2did. ix. 608, 
KaTa TOUS VOmOUS, ovs od vewoTl denoe ypadew drat yap éypadycay, 
Kal ovdels avTovs Hpavile xpdvos), and the sense of disappearance in 
ddavigpes appears already in the LXX (4g. Jer 2887 nat éorat 
BaBvAwy eis &havic pov). 

But the new dayjx7 1s also superior to the old by its sacrifice 
(91"-), sacrifice being essential to any forgiveness such as has been 
promised. The older dva0y«y had its sanctuary and ritual (vv.2-), 
but even these (vv.®.) indicated a defect. 


1 The first covenant had indeed tts regulations for worship and a material 
sanctuary. 7 A tent was set up (katackevdf{w as in 3°), the outer tent, con- 
taining the lampstand, the table, and the loaves of the Presence; this 7s 
called the Holy place. * But behind (werd only here in NT of place) the 
second vetl was the tent called the Holy of Holtes, * containing the golden 
altar of incense, and also the ark of the covenant covered all over with gold, 
which held the golden pot of manna, the rod of Aaron that once blossomed, 
and the tablets of the covenant ; © above thts were the cherubim of the Glory 
overshadowing the mercy-seat—matters which (z.e. all in 7) zt zs tmpossible 
Jor me to discuss at present tn detail, 





1 With rv auapriwy airav ob wh wvnoOG ért compare the parable of R. 
Jochanan and R. Eliezer on God’s readiness to forget the sinful nature of his 
servants: ‘‘ There is a parable concerning a king of flesh and blood, who said 
to his servants, Build me a great palace on the dunghill. They went and 
built it for him. It was not thenceforward the king’s pleasure to remember 
the dunghill which had been there” (Chagiga, 16 a. i, 27). 


112 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS _—s—[IX. 1. 


The kaw? Sca6qxy of 87-18 had been realized by the arrival of 
Christ (9!!); hence the older d:a6jxn was superseded, and the 
writer speaks of it in the past tense, etye. As for } mparn (sc. 
dvafyxn) of which he has been just speaking (818), the antithesis 
of the entire passage is between 4 mpdty SiaOjKy (vv.t!°) and 
Kah SrabyjKy (vv.!1-22), as is explicitly stated in v.& The xai 
(om. B 38. 206%. 216%. 489. 547. 1739. 1827 boh pesh Origen) 
before % mpwérn emphasizes the fact that the old had this in 
common with the new, viz. worship and a sanctuary. This is, of 
course, out of keeping with the Jeremianic oracle of the new 
diadyxn, which does not contemplate any such provision, but 
the writer takes a special view of dia6y«y which involves a 
celestial counterpart to the ritual provisions of the old order. 

The former dvadyxn, then, embraced 8tkadparta, ze. regula- 
tions, as in Lk 16 and 1 Mac 221: 22 (ikews tv Karadelrew vomov 
Kal OlKalwpata TOV VosLov TOD Baciréws OvK aKovTOpEOa, apedAOety 
tiv atpiav nyov), rather than rights or privileges (as, ¢.g., 
OP. 1119 rév éfaipérwy THs Hperépas tatpidos Sdixavwpdrov), 
arrangements for the cultus. Aatpetas grammatically might be 
accusative plural (as in v.®), but is probably the genitive, after 
dixatHpara, which it defines. Aarpeia or (as spelt in W) Aarpia 
(cp. Thackeray, 87) is the cultus (Ro 9+), or any specific part of 
it (Ex 12% 27). The close connexion between worship and a 
sanctuary (already in 8% 3) leads to the addition of 16 te (as in 
13 6°) &yvov Kkoopixdy. By 1d dyvov the author means the entire 
sanctuary (so, e.g., Ex 36%, Nu 3°8), not the innermost sacred 
shrine or aya aywwv. This is clear. What is not so clear is the 
meaning of koopixdy, and the meaning of its position after the 
noun without an article. Primarily xoopexds here as in Ti 2!2 
(ras KoopuKas ériMupias) is an equivalent for ért ys (8%), te. 
mundane or material, as opposed to émoupdnov or od tavtys THs 
kticews (v4), A fair parallel to this occurs in Zest. Jos. 178, 
du THY KoopiKHY pov Odgav. But did our author use it with a 
further suggestion? It would have been quite irrelevant to his 
purpose to suggest the “‘public” aspect of the sanctuary, al- 
though Jews like Philo and Josephus might speak of the temple 
as koopixds in this sense, Ze. in contrast to synagogues and 
mpocevxat, which were of local importance (Philo, ad Catum. 
to1g), or simply as a place of public worship (e.g. Jos. Bel/. 
iv. 5. 2, THS KoopiKns OpyoKeias KaTapxovTas, mpooKuvoupEevous TE 
Tos €k THS Olkovpevys wapaBddAovow eis tiv wodw). Neither 
would our author have called the sanctuary xoopuxds as symbolic 
of the xdcpos, though Philo (Vit. Moszs, iii. 3-10) and Josephus 
(Anzé. ill. 6. 4, Ul. 7. 7, Exacta yap TovTwy eis aropiunow kal 
Siatvzwow tov dAwv) also play with this fancy. He views the 
sanctuary as a dim representation of the divine sanctuary, not 


Ix. 1-4.] THE FIRST SANCTUARY 113 


of the universe. Yet he might have employed kocpixdv in a 
similar sense, if we interpret the obscure phrase pvorypiov Koope- 
Kov ékkAynolas in Did. 111! (see the notes of Dr. C. Taylor and 
Dr. Rendel Harris in their editions) as a spiritual or heavenly 
idea, “‘ depicted in the world of sense by emblematic actions or 
material objects,” “‘a symbol or action wrought upon the stage 
of this world to illustrate what was doing or to be done on a 
higher plane.” Thus, in the context of the Didache, marriage 
would be a pvorypiov Koopixdv (cp. Eph 5°?) of the spiritual rela- 
tion between Christ and his church. This early Christian usage 
may have determined the choice of xoopxdv here, the sanctuary 
being Kkoopixédv because it is the material representation or 
parabolic outward expression of the true, heavenly sanctuary. 
But at best it is a secondary suggestion; unless xoopixdy could 
be taken as “ornamented,” the controlling idea is that the 
sanctuary and its ritual were external and material (ducawpara 
gapkos, Xelporrontov, xetporrointa). The very position of koopuKdv 
denotes, as often in Greek, a stress such as might be conveyed 
in English by ‘‘a sanctuary, material indeed.” 

The é&yiov is now described (v.2"), after Ex 25-26. It con- 
sisted of two parts, each called a oxynvy. The large outer tent, 
the first (4 mpdéry) to be entered, was called “Aya (neut. plur., 
not fem. sing.). The phrase, Ars Aéyetar “Ayia! would have 
been in a better position immediately after 4 ampdry, where, 
indeed, Chrysostom (followed by Blass) reads it, instead of after 
the list of the furniture. The lampstand stood in front (to the 
south) of the sacred table on which twelve loaves or cakes of 
wheaten flour were piled ( mpoOeo1s tOv dptwy=oi apror THs 
mpobécews), the Hebrew counterpart of the well-known lectis- 
ternia: } tTpdwefa ... dptwv is a hendiadys for ‘‘the table with 
its loaves of the Presence.” Such was the furniture of the outer 
oxnvyn. Then (vv.%-5) follows a larger catalogue (cp. Joma 2*) of 
what lay inside the inner shrine (@yta dytwy) behind the curtain 
(Ex 2716) which screened this from the outer tent, and which is 
called Sevrepov kataméracpa, Sevtepov, because the first was a curtain 
hung at the entrance to the larger tent, and kataméracpa, either 
because that is the term used in Ex 26°£ (the particular passage 
the writer has in mind here), the term elsewhere being usually 
kaAvppa Or éeriomactpov (Ex 26°° etc.), or because Philo had 
expressly distinguished the outer curtain as xdAvypa, the inner 
as kataméracpa (de vita Mosis, ili. 9). This inner shrine con- 
tained (v.*) xpucodv Ouptarijpioy, z.e. a wooden box, overlaid with 
gold, on which incense (@vyéapa) was offered twice daily by the 
priests. The LXX calls this @vovacrypiov tot Ovpidparos (Ex 
30110), but our writer follows the usage of Philo, which is also, 

174 "Ayia (B arm) is an attempt to reproduce exactly the LXX phrase. 


[14 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. . [Ix. 4. 


on the whole, that of Josephus, in calling it @vpuarypioy (so 
Symm. Theodotion, Ex 30! 318); @vyaryprov, in the non-biblical 
papyri, denotes articles like censers in a sanctuary, but is never 
used in the LXX of levitical censers, though Josephus occasion- 
ally describes them thus, like the author of 4 Mac 744 The 
ordinary view was that this @uprarnprov stood beside the Auxvia 
and the sacred tpdmefa in the outer sanctuary. Both Philo (e.g. 
guis rer. div. 46, Tpiav ovtTwy év Tois dyiows oKevedv, AvXVLAS, 
tpamelns, Ovpwarnpion : de vita Mos. ll. g f., in the outer tent, TO. 
Aourra Tpia oKEUn... pEecov pev TO Gupcarnplov . .. THY Oe AvyXViaV 

. 9 O€ tTparela) and Josephus (Azz. il. 6. 4 f.; cp. vill. 4. 1 for 
the reproduction in Solomon’s temple) are quite explicit on this. 
Indeed no other position was possible for an altar which required 
daily service from the priests ; inside the ayia tov dyiwv it would 
have been useless. But another tradition, which appears in the 
contemporary (Syriac) apocalypse of Baruch (67), placed the 
altar of incense! inside the Gyta ayiwy, a view reflected as early 
as the Samaritan text of the pentateuch, which put Ex 30}? 
(the description of the altar of incense) after 26%, where logically 
it ought to stand, inserting a 77 985 in Ex 4027 (where the 
altar of incense is placed “‘ before the veil”). The earliest hint 
of this tradition seems to be given in the Hebrew text of 1 K 6”, 
where Solomon is said to have overlaid with gold ‘‘the altar that 
is by the oracle” (ze. the ayia dyiwv). But our author could not 
have been influenced by this, for it is absent from the LXX text. 
His inaccuracy was rendered possible by the vague language of 
the pentateuch about the position of the altar of incense, amévaytt 
TOU KaTameTdopatos TOU OvTOS:érl THS KUBwTOD TaY papTUpLOY 
(Ex 30°), where dzévavts may mean “opposite” or ‘close in 
front of” the curtain—but on which side of it? In Ex 37 the 
tpamefa, the Avxvia, and the altar of incense are described 
successively after the items in the ayia dyiwy ; but then the LXX 
did not contain the section on the altar of incense, so that this 
passage offered no clue to our writer. In Ex 40° it is merely put 
évavtiov THs KiBwrod. This vagueness is due to the fact that in 
the original source the sketch of the oxnvy had no altar’ of 
incense at all; the latter is a later accretion, hence the curious 
position of Ex 301° in a sort of appendix, and the ambiguity 
about its site. 


After all it is only an antiquarian detail for our author. It has been 
suggested that he regarded the dyia rdv dylwy, irrespective of the veil, as 
symbolizing the heavenly sanctuary, and that he therefore thought it must 
include the altar of incense as symbolizing the prayers of the saints. But 
there is no trace of such a symbolism elsewhere in the epistle ; it is confined to 
the author of the Apocalypse (8°), The suggestion that he meant éyouca 


1 Whether the language means this or a censer is disputed. 


IX. 4, 5.] THE SACRED ARK 115 


to express only a close or ideal connexion between the inner shrine and the 
altar of incense, is popular (e.g. Delitzsch, Zahn, Peake, Seeberg) but quite 
unacceptable ; éxovoa as applied to the other items could not mean this, and 
what applies to them applies to the @uysarjpiov. Besides, the point of the 
whole passage is to distinguish between the contents of the two compartments. 
Still less tenable is the idea that @vurarypiov really means ‘‘censer” or 
‘*incense pan.” This way out of the difficulty was started very early (in the 
peshitta, the vulgate), but a censer is far too minor a utensil to be included in 
this inventory ; even the censer afterwards used on atonement-day did not 
belong to the dyia Tov ayiwy, neither was it golden. What the oxnv7 had 
was merely a brazier (wvupeiov, Lv 16!*). Since it is not possible that so 
important an object as the altar of incense could have been left out, we may 
assume without much hesitation that the writer did mean to describe it by 
Oumaryprov,? and that the irregularity of placing it on the wrong side of the 
curtain is simply another of his inaccuracies in describing what he only 
knew from the text of the LXX. In B the slip is boldly corrected by the 
transference of (kal) xpucodv Ouuscarjpiov to v.*, immediately after dprwv (so 
Blass). 


The second item is thy kiBwrdv tis d1a0AKns covered with gold 
all over (dvtoev: Philo’s phrase is évdoGev xat éEwbev, de Lbriet. 
21), a chest or box about 4 feet long and 24 feet broad and high 
(Ex 251%), which held three sacred treasures, (a) the golden pot 
(ordépvos, Attic feminine) of manna (Ex 16°84) ; (4) Aaron’s rod 4 
BXactioaca (in the story of Nu17!!, which attested the sacerdotal 
monopoly of the clan of Levi); and (c) at mdkes ris Sra0jKns 
(Ex 2516 3118), 7.¢. the two stone tablets on which the decalogue 
was written (wAdkas diabyKns, Dt 99; evéBadrov tas wAdkas eis THY 
x.Bwrov, 10°), the decalogue summarizing the terms of the da6yxn 
for the People. In adding ypvo7 to crapvos the writer follows the 
later tradition of the LXX and of Philo (de congressu, 18); the pot 
is not golden in the Hebrew original. He also infers, as later 
Jewish tradition did, that the ark contained this pot, although, 
like Aaron’s rod, it simply lay in front of the ark (Ex 16% 34, Nu 
171°), He would gather from 1 K 8° that the ark contained the 
tablets of the covenant. He then (v.°) mentions the yxepouBety 
(Aramaic form) or xepouBeip (Hebrew form) 8¢§ys, two small 
winged figures (Ex 2518-20), whose pinions extended over a 
rectangular gold slab, called té thacriptov, laid on the top of the 
ark, which it fitted exactly. They are called cherubim Adéys, 
which is like MeyaAwowvys (1° 8!) a divine title, applied to Jesus 
in Ja 21, but here used as in Ro 94. The cherubim on the 
tkaoryprov represented the divine Presence as accessible in mercy ; 
the mystery of this is suggested by the couplet in Sir 498 @® : 


TeCexinr, Os eldev dpaciww Adéns 
nv trédakey aitd él appatos yepouBeip. 
The change from év 7 to éxovea is purely stylistic, and éyovoa in both 


instances means ‘‘ containing.” 
2 xpucotv Ousarypov lacks the article, like orduvos xpvoj. 


116 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS ___ [IX. 5. 


Philo’s account of 16 ttaornpvoy is given in de vita Mosis, iii. 
8, 7 Ol KiBwros . . . KEexpvowpéevn ToAVTEADS EvOobEV TE Kai cEwOer, 
ns ériBeua woavel TOMA TO AEeyOpevoy ev tepais BiBrAos tAaoTHprov 
. . . Omep €oixey elvar tp Borov Pvoikdtepov pev THS tAew TOV Heov 
duvaews. Lower down, in the same paragraph, he speaks of 
TO ériBena TO Tpocayopevdpevov tAacrTyptov, and 16 thaoTHpLoy is 
similarly used in De Cherub. 8 (on the basis of Ex 251%). The 
émiOeua or covering of the ark was splashed with blood on 
atonement-day; perhaps, even apart from that, its Hebrew 
original meant “means of propitiation,” and was not incorrectly 
named thacrtyptoy (cp. Deissmann in £&B2. 3027-3035), but our 
author simply uses it in its LXX sense of ‘‘ mercy-seat.” He does 
not enter into any details about its significance; in his scheme 
of sacrificial thought such a conception had no place. Philo 
also allegorizes the overshadowing wings of the cherubim as a 
symbol of God’s creative and royal powers protecting the cosmos, 
and explains Ex 25?" as follows (Quaest. in Exod. 25%): 7a peév 
ovv mept THY KiBwTrov Kata pépos eipytac’ det 5€ avAANLdnV avabev 
avahaBovta Tod yvwpioa xdpw Ttivwv Taira éote cUuBora dveSedAOciv: 
nv O€ Tadtta cupBodskd’ KLBwrds Kal Ta ev aiTH Onoavprlopeva vopipa 
Kal emt tavtns TO tAacTypiov Kal Ta eri Tod itAaoTypiov Xaddaiwv 
yAarTn AeyOpeva XEpovBip, imep Oe TovTwY KaTa TO pécov hovi Kal 
Aoyos Kat trepavw 6 Né€ywv xtX. But our author does not enter 
into any such details. He has no time for further discussion of 
the furniture, he observes; whether he would have allegorized 
these items of antiquarian ritual, if or when he had leisure, we 
cannot tell. The only one he does employ mystically is the kata- 
métacpa (1079), and his use of it is not particularly happy. He 
now breaks off, almost as Philo does (guzs rer. div. 45, rohiv 8 évra 
Tov Tepl éexdorov Adyov trepOereov eicvadbis) On the same subject. 
Kata pépos is the ordinary literary phrase in this connexion (e.g. 
2 Mac 2%; Polybius, i. 67. 11, repi dv ody oldy re dua. TS ypadys Tov 
Kata pepos arododvat Adyov, and Poimandres [ed. Reitzenstein, p. 84 | 
Tept @v 6 Kata pepos NOyos éorl TOAVs). Odx ot as in r Co 11”, 

Worship in a sanctuary like this shows that access to God 
was defective (vv.%8), as was inevitable when the sacrifices were 
external (vv.810), Having first shown this, the writer gets back to 
the main line of his argument (8%), viz. the sacrifice of Jesus 
as pre-eminent and final (v.14), 


8 Such were the arrangements for worship. The priests constantly enter 
the first tent (v.*) in the discharge of their ritual duties," but the second tent 
zs entered only once a year by the highpriest alone—and it must not be with-— 
out blood, which he presents on behalf of (cp. 58) himself and the errors of 
the People. * By this the holy Spirit means that the way into the Holiest 
Presence was not yet disclosed so long as the first tent ® (which foreshadowed 
the present age) was still standing, with its offerings of gifts and sacrifices 
which cannot (uh as in 4”) possibly make the conscience of the worshipper 


IX. 6-8. | THE CULTUS 117 


perfect, © since they relate (sc. obcat) merely to food and drink and a variety 
of ablutions—outward regulations for the body, that only hold till the period 
of the New Order. 


In v.° 81 wavtés = continually, as in BAZ. i. 428 (i1 B.c.) of ev 
oikw mavtes cou diaravtTos pvelay movovmevor. Etiotaow (which 
might even be the present with a futuristic sense, the writer 
placing himself and his readers back at the inauguration of the 
sanctuary : ‘‘ Now, this being all ready, the priests will enter,” etc.) 
émuteNodvtes (a regular sacerdotal or ritual term in Philo) Natpetas 
(morning and evening, to trim the lamps and offer incense on the 
golden altar, Ex 272! 307% etc. ; weekly, to change the bread of 
the Presence, Lv 248, Jos. Avz. iii. 6. 6). The ritual of the 
inner shrine (v.%) is now described (v.’, cp. Joma 5%) ; the place is 
entered by the highpriest diag toé évwautod, on the annual day of 
atonement (Lv 167% 34, Ex 301°): only once, and he must be 
alone (xévos, Lv 1617), this one individual out of all the priests. 
Even he dare not enter xwpis atyatos (Lv 16!4%), ze. without 
carrying in blood from the sacrifice offered for his own and the 
nation’s a&yvonpdtev. In Gn 43)? dyvénpa is “an oversight,” but 
in Jg 5% Tob 33, 1 Mac 13%, Sir 237 ayvojpara and “sins” 
are bracketed together (see above on 5”), and the word occurs 
alone in Polyb. xxxvili. 1. 5 as an equivalent for “ offences ” or 
“errors” in the moral sense. ‘There is no hint that people were 
not responsible for them, or that they were not serious; on the 
contrary, they had to be atoned for. ‘Ymép xrd.; fora similarly 
loose construction cp. 1 Jn 2? (od epi qerépwy [auaptidv] Se 
povov, GAG Kal wept dAov Tod Kdc pov). 

Rabbi Ismael b. Elischa, the distinguished exegete of i-ii A.D., classified 
sins as follows (Jos. Joma 5°): Transgressions of positive enactments were 
atoned for by repentance, involving a purpose of new obedience, according 
to Jer 2273 (‘* Return, ye backsliding children, and I will heal your back- 
slidings”). The day of atonement, however, was necessary for the full 
pardon of offences against divine prohibitions: according to Lv 16% (‘On 
that day shall the priest make atonement for you, to cleanse you, that ye 
may be clean from all your sins”). An offender whose wrongdoing deserved 
severe or capital punishment could only be restored by means of sufferings : 
according to Ps 89*? (‘‘ Then will I visit their transgression with the rod, and 
their iniquity with stripes”). But desecration of the divine Name could not 
be atoned for by any of these three methods; death alone wiped out this sin 


(Jer 244). 

The author now (v.8) proceeds to find a spiritual significance 
in this ceremonial. An oévtos is used of a divine meaning as in 
1227, here conveyed by outward facts. In 1 P 1! the verb is 
again used of the Spirit, and this is the idea here; Josephus 
(Ant. iil. 7. 7, SnAot dé kai tov HALoV Kal TiY GeANHVHY TGV Gapdoviyov 
éxatepos) uses the same verb for the mystic significance of the 
jewels worn by the highpriest, but our author’s interpretation of 
the significance of the oxyvy is naturally very different from that 


118 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS [IX. 8-10. 


of Josephus, who regards the unapproachable character of the 
advurov or inner shrine as symbolizing heaven itself (Amv. iii. 6. 4 
and 7. 7, 6 rots tepetow Av GBatov, ws oipavds avetto TH Oe@.. . 
dua TO Kal TOV ovpavoy dveriBatov elvat avOpwois). For 686v with 
gen. in sense of “way to,” cp. Gn 3% (ryv odov tod EvAou ris 
Cwns), Tg 514 (eis 600v rod sive: Tév dyiwy here (like ra dyia in 
vy.12 25, cp. 13!) as in 10! means the very Presence of God, an 
archaic liturgical phrase suggested by the context. The word 
davepodoba was not found by the writer in his text of the LXX ; 
it only occurs in the LXX in Jer 40 (33)®, and the Latin phrase 
“iter patefieri” (e.g. Caesar, de Bello Gall. iii. 1) is merely a 
verbal parallel. In tis mpdtns oxnvis éxovons otdow (v.°), the 
writer has chosen oraow for the sake of assonance with éveoryxKdra, 
but éyewv ordow is a good Greek phrase for “‘to be in existence.” 
The parenthesis nts | mapaBodh (here = rvzros, as Chrysostom saw) 
eis Tov Katpov Tov eveoTnKdTa Means that the first oxyvy was merely 
provisional, as it did no more than adumbrate the heavenly 
reality, and provisional eis (as in Ac 4 eis tHv atptov) Tov 
Kalpov Tov evertyKoTa, 7.€. the period in which the writer and his 
readers lived, the period inaugurated by the advent of Jesus with 
his new 8:a04xyn. This had meant the supersession of the older 
duabyxyn with its sanctuary and SiKkotwpata, which only lasted 
péxpt Katpod SropAdcews. But, so long as they lasted, they were 
intended by God to foreshadow the permanent order of religion ; 
they were, as the writer says later (v.7°), bod8etypata tay év tots 
odpavots, mere copies but still copies. This is why he calls the 
fore-tent a wapaBohy. For now, as he adds triumphantly, in a 
daring, imaginative expression, our dpyxvepeds has passed through 
his heavenly fore-tent (v.14), and his heavenly sanctuary corre- 
sponds to a heavenly (ze. a full and final) sacrifice. In the 
levitical ritual the highpriest on atonement-day took the blood 
of the victim through the fore-tent into the inner shrine. Little 
that accomplished! It was but a dim emblem of what our high- 
priest was to do and has done, in the New Order of things. 


When readers failed to see that #tTis ... éveornxdta was a parenthesis, it 
was natural that xa’ #v should be changed into xa6’ dv (D¢° K L P, so Blass). 


The failure of animal sacrifices (9°!) lies kara ouveiSnow. As 
the inner consciousness here is a consciousness of sin, ‘‘con- 
science” fairly represents the Greek term ovveidynots. Now, the 
levitical sacrifices were ineffective as regards the conscience of 
worshippers; they were merely émi Bodpac kal mopacw kal S.add- 
pots Bamtiopots, a striking phrase (cp. 13°) of scorn for the mass of 


1 Sc. #v. The construction was explained by the addition of xaééornxev 


after éveotnxdra (80 69. 104. 330. 436. 440. 462. 491. 823. 1319. 1836, 1837. 
1898. 2005. 2127, etc.). 


IX. 10.] THE CULTUS 11g 


minute regulations about what might or might not be eaten or 
drunk, and about baths, etc. Food and ablutions are intelligible ; 
a book like Leviticus is full of regulations about them. But 
wopacw? Well, the writer adds this as naturally as the author of 
Ep. Aristeas does, in describing the levitical code. ‘‘I suppose 
most people feel some curiosity about the enactments of our law 
mepi te TOV Bpwrav Kal rotav” (128); it was to safeguard us from 
pagan defilement that ravrofev nuds mepréppagev ayveias kal dia 
Bpwrdv kai rotdv (142), ért tv Bpwrdv Kal rordv amapgapevovus 
evOéws TéTe ovyxpnoGar KeAever (158). It is curious that this de- 
fence of the levitical code contains an allusion which is a verbal 
parallel to our writer’s disparaging remark here; the author asserts 
that intelligent Egyptian priests call the Jews ‘‘men of God,” a 
title only applicable to one who oéBerat tov xara dAnbeav Oedv, 
since all others are dv@pwrot Bpwrav Kat rorav Kat oxérns, 7 yap 
raca didbeots atrav éri ratra katadevyer. Tots dé rap’ nudav év ovdevi 
ratta AeAdyiotat (140. 141). Libations of wine accompanied 
certain levitical sacrifices (e.g. Nu 515 615-17 287£), but no ritual 
regulations were laid down for them, and they were never offered 
independently (cp. £472. 4193, 4209). It is because the whole 
question of sacrifice is now to be restated that he throws in these 
disparaging comments upon the 8epd te kat Ouotar and their ac- 
companiments in the older oxnyy. Such sacrifices were part and 
parcel of a system connected with (v.!°) external ritual, and in con- 
cluding the discussion he catches up the term with which he had 
opened it: all such rites are 8ixaidpata capKds, connected with the 
sensuous side of life and therefore provisional, yéxpt katpod Siopb6- 
cews émikeipeva. Here émixeiweva is “prescribed,” as in the descrip- 
tion of workmen on strike, in Zedt. P. 26!" (114 B.C.) éykaraXeczrov- 
Tas THVv érikepevynv acxoAtav. Aropfwo.s means a “reconstruction ” 
of religion, such as the new d:a6yx7 (81%) involved ; the use of the 
term in Polybius, iii, 118. 12 (zpos Tas Tov ToALTEvpaTwv SLopAadcets), 
indicates how our author could seize on it for his own purposes. 


The comma might be omitted after Bawticpots, and Stkatdpara taken 
closely with pévov: ‘‘ gifts and sacrifices, which (udvov xr, in apposition) are 
merely (the subject of) outward regulations for the body,” émf being taken as 
cumulative (Lk 37°)—‘‘ besides,” etc. This gets over the difficulty that the 
levitical offerings had a wider scope than food, drink, and ablutions; but ézi 
is not natural in this sense here, and éwi . . . Bamriopois is not a parenthetical 
clause. The insertion of kai before dicausyara (by 8° B D¢ etc. vg hkl Chrys.), 
=‘‘even” or ‘‘in particular” (which is the only natural sense), is pointless. 
Atkawpaow (D° K L vg hkl) was an easy conformation to the previous datives, 
which would logically involve émixeimévors (as the vg implies: ‘‘et justitiis 
carnis usque ad tempus correctionis impositis”’), otherwise étxelueva would be 
extremely awkward, after duvvdmevar, in apposition to dwpa re kal Aveta 


Now for the better sanctuary and especially the better sacri- 
fice of Christ as our dpxvepeds (vv.1-28) ! 


120 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS |IX. 11. 


But when Christ arrived as the highpriest of the bliss that was to be, he 
passed through the greater and more perfect tent which no hands had made (no 
part, that is to say, of the present order), 1* not (ovdé=nor yet) Zaking any blood 
of goats and calves but his own blood, and entered once for all into the Holy 
place. He secured an eternal redemption. ™ For if the blood of goats and bulls 
and the ashes of a heifer, sprinkled on defiled persons, give them a holiness that 
bears on bodily purity, 4 how much more shall (xa@apret, logical future) the blood 
of Christ, who in the spirit of the eternal offered himself as an unblemished 
sacrifice to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve a living God.” 


This paragraph consists of two long sentences (vv.1)+ 12, 15. 14), 
The second is an explanation of aiwviay Autpwowy eipdpevos at the 
close of the first. In the first, the sphere, the action, and the 
object of the sacrifice are noted, as a parallel to vv.° 7; but in 
vv.13. 14 the sphere is no longer mentioned, the stress falling upon 
the other two elements. The writer does not return to the 
question of the sphere till v.21 

Xpiotds S€ mapayerduevos (v.11), But Christ came on the 
scene,! and all was changed. He arrived as dpxtepeds, and the 
author carries on the thought by an imaginative description of 
him passing through the upper heavens (no hand-made, mun- 
dane fore-court this!) into the innermost Presence. It is a more 
detailed account of what he had meant by €xovtes dpytepéa péyav 
SreAnAuOdra Tods odpavods (4!*). Xeporroijtou, like xerpotrotnta (v.74), 
means ‘“‘ manufactured,” not “fictitious” (as applied to idols or 
idol-temples by the LXX and Philo). Tout €orw od radtys Tis 
kticews reads like the gloss of a scribe, but the writer is fond of 
this phrase tour’ €or, and, though it adds nothing to od xerpo- 
moutou, it may stand. Kriots, in this sense of creation or created 
order, was familiar to him (e.g. Wis 517 19°). MeAdévtwv, before 
dya0ay, was soon altered into yevouévwy (by B D* 1611. 1739. 
2005 vt syr Orig. Chrys.), either owing to a scribe being misled 
by wapayevomevos Or Owing to a pious feeling that weAAovrwy here 
(though not in 10!) was too eschatological. The dyafa were. 
péAAovra in a sense even for Christians, but already they had 
begun to be realized; e.g. in the AUtpwois. This full range was 
still to be disclosed (2° 13!4), but they were realities of which 
Christians had here and now some vital experience (see on 6°). 


Some editors (e.g. Rendall, Nairne) take rv yevouévwr dyabGy with what 
follows, as if the writer meant to say that ‘‘ Christ appeared as highpriest of 
the good things which came by the greater and more perfect tabernacle (not 
made with hands—that is, not of this creation).” This involves, (a) the 
interpretation of ovdé as=‘‘ not by the blood of goats and calves either,” the 
term carrying on mapavyevduevos ; and (2) dud in a double sense. There is no 
objection to (4), but (a) is weak; the bliss and benefit are mediated not 
through the sphere but through what Jesus does in the sphere of the eternal 
oxnyy. Others (e.g. Westcott, von Soden, Dods, Seeberg) take da rfjs 


1 Tlaparyevduevos (as Lk 124, Mt 3! suggest) is more active than the re¢a- 
vépwrat of v.76, 


IX. 11-13.] THE NEW AND TRUE SACRIFICE 121 


oxnvys with Xpirrés, ‘Christ by means of the . . . sanctuary.” This sense 
of did is better than that of (a) above, and it keeps did the same for vv.!! 
and }*,_ But the context (rapayevduevos . . . elojOev) points to the local use 
of did in dua THs . . . OKs, rather than to the instrumental; and it is no 
objection that the writer immediately uses 6:4 in another sense (60 atuaros), 
for this is one of his literary methods (cp. dé with gen. and accus. in 2)? 


29. 10 718. 19. 23. 24. 25). 

Continuing the description of Christ’s sacrifice, he adds (v.}%) 
ovdé Be aipatos tpdywv (for the People) kat pédcxev (for himself), 
which according to the programme in Lv 16 the priest smeared 
on the east side of the iAacrypiov. The later Jewish procedure 
is described in the Mishna tractate Joma, but our author simply 
draws upon the LXX text, though (like Aquila and Symmachus) 
he uses pocywv instead of yiwapwy. Ard is graphically used in 
31a Tod idtou aiparos, as in 8 atywatos Tpdywv Kat pdoxwv, but the 
idea is the self-sacrifice, the surrender of his own life, in virtue 
of which! he redeemed his People, the aia or sacrifice being 
redemptive as it was his. The single sacrifice had eternal value, 
owing to his personality. The term épdmaég, a stronger form of 
amaé, which is unknown to the LXX, is reserved by our author 
for the sacrifice of Jesus, which he now describes as issuing in 
a Av’Tpwors—an archaic religious term which he never uses else- 
where; it is practically the same as daodttpwors (v.15), but he 
puts into it a much deeper meaning than the LXX or than Luke 
(168 238), the only other NT writer who employs the term. 
Though he avoids the verb, his meaning is really that of 1 P 118 
(€AutpwOyre Tiniw aipwate os duvod audmov Kal doriiov Xpicrod) 
or of Ti 214 (ds édwxey Eavtdv irép judy, va AvTpwoHTa NUas amd 
maons avopuias Kal kabapion éavTd Aadv EpLovarov). 

In this compressed phrase, aiwviav AVTpwoLw evpdpevos, (a) alwvlay 
offers the only instance of alwvios being modified in this epistle. (4) Hipd- 
frevos, in the sense of Dion. Hal. Ant. v. 293 (otre diaddayas eUparo Trois 
dvdpaov Kai ké0odov), and Jos. Amt. i. 19. I (wdmmov ddégav aperis meyddns 
evpdpevov), is a participle (for its form,? cp. Moulton, i. p. 51), which, though 
middle, is not meant to suggest any personal effort like ‘‘ by himself,” much 
less ‘‘ for himself”; the middle in Hellenistic Greek had come to mean what 
the active meant. What he secured, he secured for us (cp. Aelian, Var. H7st. 
iii. 17, kal avrots cwrnplay evpayro). The aorist has not a past sense; it 
either means ‘‘to secure” (like evpdmevor in 4 Mac 38 and émicxewdevor in 


2 Mac 11%), after a verb of motion (cp. Ac 251%), or ‘‘ securing” (by what 
grammarians call ‘‘ coincident action”). 


The last three words of v.!2 are now (vv.!% 14) explained by 
an a fortiori argument. Why was Christ’s redemption eternal ? 
What gave it this absolute character and final force? In y.}8 


1 The é:a here as in dia mvevparos alwvlov suggest the state in which a 
certain thing is done, and inferentially the use becomes instrumental, as we 
say, ‘‘ he came 2 power.” 

2 The Attic form evpduevos is preferred by D* 226. 436. 920. 


122 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS (IX. 18. 


tpdywav Kat tavpwy reverses the order in ro‘, and ravpwv is now 
substituted for pooywv. The former led to ravpwr kal tpdywv 
being read (by the K LP group, Athanasius, Cyril, etc.), but 
“the blood of goats and bulls” was a biblical generalization 
(Ps 5018, Is 114), chosen here as a literary variation, perhaps for 
the sake of the alliteration, though some editors see in tavpwv a 
subtle, deliberate antithesis to the feminine Sdpadts. According 
to the directions of Nu 19% a red cow was slaughtered and then 
burned ; the ashes (i) omdd0s tis Sapddews) were mixed with fresh 
water and sprinkled upon any worshipper who had touched a 
dead body and thus incurred ceremonial impurity, contact with 
the dead being regarded as a disqualification for intercourse with 
men or God (see above on 61). This mixture was called idwp 
pavriopod. The rite supplies the metaphors of the argument in 
vy.14 15; it was one of the ablutions (v.!°) which restored the 
contaminated person (tods kekowwpévous) to the worshipping 
community of the Lord. The cow is described as dywpoy, the 
purified person as xa@apds ; but our author goes ouside the LXX 
for kexowwpevous, and even payrifew is rare in the LXX. “The 
red colour of the cow and the scarlet cloth burnt on the pyre 
with the aromatic woods, suggest the colour of blood; the aro- 
matic woods are also probably connected with primitive ideas of 
the cathartic value of odours such as they produce” (R. A. S. 
Macalister in ZRZ. xi. 36a). The lustration had no connexion 
whatever with atonement-day, and it was only in later rabbinic 
tradition that it was associated with the functions of the high- 
priest. According to Pestkta 40a, a pagan inquirer once pointed 
out to Rabbi Jochanan ben Zakkai the superstitious character of 
such rites. His disciples considered his reply unsatisfactory, 
and afterwards pressed him to explain to them the meaning of 
the ashes and the sprinkling, but all he could say was that it had 
been appointed by the Holy One, and that men must not 
inquire into His reasons (cp. Bacher’s Agada d. Pal. Amoréer, 
i.556; Agada der Tannaiten*, i. 37, 38). Our author does not go 
into details, like the author of Z~. Barnadas (8), who allegorizes 
the ritual freely in the light of the Jewish tradition; he merely 
points out that, according to the bible, the rite, like the similar 
rite of blood on atonement-day, restored the worshipper to out- 
ward communion with God. “Ayidé£er means this and no more. 


The removal of the religious tabu upon persons contaminated by contact 
with the dead was familiar to non-Jews. The writer goes back to the OT 
for his illustration, but it would be quite intelligible to his Gentile Christian 
readers (cp. Marett’s Zhe Evolution of Religion, pp. 115 f.; ERE. iv. 434, 
x. 456, 483, 485, 501), in a world where physical contact with the dead was 
a placua. Philo’s exposition (de spec. legebus, i. rept Ovévrwy, I f.) of the rite 
is that the primary concern is for the purity of the soul; the attention 
needed for securing that the victim is duwpor, or, as he says, mavred@s 


IX. 13, 14. | THE BLOOD OF CHRIST 123 


Lovuwv auéroxov, is a figurative expression for moral sensitiveness on the part 
of the worshipper ; it is a regulation really intended for rational beings. Ov 
Tay Ovonévwv dpovtis éotw ... addAa TOV OuvdvTwv, va wept pndév mdBos 
Knpaivwot. The bodily cleansing is only secondary, and even this he ingeni- 
ously allegorizes into a demand for self-knowledge, since the water and ashes 
should remind us how worthless our natures are, and knowledge of this kind 
is a wholesome purge for conceit! Thus, according to Philo, the rite did 
purge soul as well as body: dvayxatoy rovs pwéddovras Poirav els TO lepdv emi 
perovolg Ovolas 7d Te TGua pardpivecOar kal Thy Wuxhv mpd Tov gwuaros. Our 
author does not share this favourable view (cp. Seeberg’s Der Tod Christi, 
pp. 53f.; O. Schmitz’s Dze Opferanschauung des spiteren Judentums, pp. 
281f.). He would not have denied that the levitical cultus aimed at spiritual 
good ; what he did deny was that it attained its end. Till a perfect sacrifice 
was offered, such an end was unattainable. The levitical cultus ‘‘ provided 
a ritual cleansing for the community, a cleansing which, for devout minds that 
could penetrate beneath the letter to the spirit, must have often meant a sense 
of restoration to God’s community. But at best the machinery was cumbrous : 
at best the pathway into God’s presence was dimly lighted” (H. A. A. 
Kennedy, Zhe Theology of the Epistles, p. 213). 


Our author does not explain how the blood of goats and 
bulls could free the worshiper from ceremonial impurity; the 
cathartic efficacy of blood is assumed. From the comparative 
study of religion we know now that this belief was due to the 
notion that ‘‘the animal that has been consecrated by contact 
with the altar becomes charged with a divine potency, and its 
sacred blood, poured over the impure man, absorbs and disperses 
his impurity” (Marett, Zhe Evolution of Religion, p. 121). But 
in pds “Efpaiovs, (a) though the blood of goats and bulls is 
applied to the people as well as to the altar, and is regarded as 
atoning (see below), the writer offers no rationale of sacrifice. 
Xwpis aivatexxvotas ov yiverar dears. He does not argue, he takes 
for granted, that access to God involves sacrifice, z.e. blood shed. 
(2) He uses the rite of Nu 19 to suggest the cathartic process, 
the point of this lustration being the use of “ water made holy 
by ,being mingled with the ashes of the heifer that had been 
burnt.” ‘The final point is reached,” no doubt (Marett, of. cit. 
123), “when it is realized that the blood of bulls and goats 
cannot wash away sin, that nothing external can defile the heart 
or soul, but only evil thoughts and evil will.” Yet our writer 
insists that even this inward defilement requires a sacrifice, the 
sacrifice of Christ’s blood. This is now (v.!*) urged in the phrase 
€autéy mpoonveykev, Where we at last see what was intended by 
mpoodepe tt in 8°, Weare not to think of the risen or ascended 
Christ presenting himself to God, but of his giving himself up 
to die as a sacrifice. The blood of Christ means his life given 
up for the sake of men. He did die, but it was a Voluntary 
death—not the slaughter of an unconscious, reluctant victim ; 
and he who died lives. More than that, he lives with the power 
of that death or sacrifice. This profound thought is further 


124 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS (Ix. 14, 


developed by (a) the term &pwpoy, which is in apposition to 
éavtov ; and (A) by 8a mvedpatos aiwviou, which goes with mpoo%- 
veyxev. (a) Paul calls Christians, or calls them to be, duwpor ; 
but our writer, like the author of 1 P (11%), calls Christ duwpos 
asavictim. It is a poetic synonym for duepyros, taken over as 
the technical term (LXX) for the unblemished (039) animals 
which alone could be employed in sacrifice ; here it denotes the 
stainless personality, the sinless nature which rendered the self- 
sacrifice of Jesus eternally valid. Then (4) the pregnant phrase 
dia mvevpatos aiwviov, which qualifies éavréy mpoonveyxey, Means 
that this sacrifice was offered in the realm or order of the inward 
spirit, not of the outward and material; it was no dixaiwpa 
capkos, but carried out da mrvevparos, Ze. in, or in virtue of, his 
spiritual nature. What the author had called {wy dxaradvros 
(716) he now calls mvedpa aidvov. The sacrificial blood had a 
mystical efficacy; it resulted in an eternal AUtpwois because it 
operated in an eternal order of spirit, the sacrifice of Jesus 
purifying the inner personality (t7v cvveldnow) because it was the 
action of a personality, and of a sinless personality which 
belonged by nature to the order of spirit or eternity. Christ 
was both priest and victim; as Son of God he was eternal and 
spiritual, unlike mortal highpriests (716), and, on the other side, 
unlike a mortal victim. The implication (which underlies all 
the epistle) is that even in his earthly life Jesus possessed eternal 
life. Hence what took place in time upon the cross, the writer 
means, took place really in the eternal, absolute order. Christ 
sacrificed himself épdmag, and the single sacrifice needed. no 
repetition, since it possessed absolute, eternal value as the action 
of One who belonged to the eternal order. He died—he had 
to die—but only once (g—10}8), for his sacrifice, by its eternal 
significance, accomplished at a stroke what no amount of animal 
sacrifices could have secured, viz. the forgiveness of sins. It is 
as trivial to exhaust the meaning of tvedpa aidvioy in a contrast 
with the animal sacrifices of the levitical cultus as it is irrele- 
vant to drag in the dogma of the trinity. Atwviouv closely 
describes avedpatos (hence it has no article). What is in the 
writer’s mind is the truth that what Jesus did by dying can never 
be exhausted or transcended. His sacrifice, like his 81a6yxn, 
like the Avtpwois or owrypia which he secures, is atdvios or 
lasting, because it is at the heart of things. It was because Jesus 
was what he was by nature that his sacrifice had such final value; 
its atoning significance lay in his vital connexion with the realm 
of absolute realities ; it embodied all that his divine personality 
meant for men in relation to God. In short, his self-sacrifice 
“‘was something beyond which nothing could be, or could be 
conceived to be, as a response to God’s mind and requirement 


IX. 14.] THE SACRIFICE OF CHRIST 125 


in relation to sin... an intelligent and loving response to the 
holy and gracious will of God, and to the terrible situation of 
man” (Denney, Zhe Death of Christ, p. 228). 


A later parallel from rabbinic religion occurs in the Midrash Tehillim on 
Ps 31: ‘‘ formerly you were redeemed with flesh and blood, which to-day is 
and to-morrow is buried ; wherefore your redemption was temporal (ayy nb1x3). 
But now I will redeem you by myself, who live and remain for ever ; where- 
fore your redemption will be eternal redemption (oy n>wa, cp. Is 45}7).” 

One or two minor textual items may be noted in v."4, 

avevpatos] J. J. Reiske’s conjecture dyvevuaros (purity) is singularly 
prosaic. Atwviov (x* A B D° K L syr’g 5*! arm Ath) is altered into the con- 
ventional dylov by x° D* P 35. 88. 206. 326. 547, etc. lat boh Chrys. Cyril. 
Liturgical usage altered tpa@v into 7udv (A D* P 5. 38. 218. 241. 256. 263. 
378. 506. 1319. 1831. 1836*. 1912. 2004. 2127 vt syr’2 boh Cyr.), and, to 
fwvr., kal ddnOuw@ (a gloss from 1 Th 1°) is added in A P 104 boh Chrys, etc. 


In the closing words of v.!* ka@apiet is a form which is rare 
(Mt 3!2, Ja 48?) in the NT, so rare that xafapioe is read here 
by 206, 221. 1831 Did. Ath. It is a Hellenistic verb, used in 
the inscriptions (with do) exactly in the ceremonial sense under- 
lying the metaphor of this passage (Deissmann, Bible Studies, 
216f.). The cleansing of the conscience (cp. v.°) is d&md vexpdv 
épywy, from far more serious flaws and stains than ceremonial 
pollution by contact with a corpse (see above, and in 61). As 
Dods puts it, ‘‘a pause might be made before épywv, from dead— 
(not bodies but) works.” The object is eis 75 Natpedew Od Love. 
The writer uses the sacerdotal term (8°) here as in 10? and 1278, 
probably like Paul in a general sense; if he thought of Chris- 
tians as priests, z.e. as possessing the right of access to God, he 
never says so. Religion for him is access to God, and ritual 
metaphors are freely used to express the thought. When others 
would say “fellowship,” he says “worship.” It is fundamental 
for him that forgiveness is essential to such fellowship, and for- 
giveness is what is meant by “ purifying the conscience.” As 
absolute forgiveness was the boon of the new dia6yxn (812), 
our author now proceeds (vv.15!-) to show how Christ’s sacrifice 
was necessary and efficacious under that 8a@jxy. <A sacrifice, 
involving death, is essential to any dafyxy: this principle, 
which applies to the new 8a0jKy (v-), is illustrated first 
generally (vv.16 17) and then specifically, with reference to the 
former 8:aOyKy (vv.!8?2), 


15 He mediates a new covenant for this reason, that those who have been 
called may obtain the eternal inheritances they have been promised, now that a 
death has occurred which redeems them from the transgressions involved in 
the first covenant. © Thus in the case of a will, the death of the testator must 
be announced. ™" A will only holds in cases of death, it 7s never valid so long 
as the testator ts alive. 3° Hence even the first (h mpwrn, sc. dia0jxn as in 9') 
covenant of Goa’s will was not inaugurated apart from blood; for after 
Moses had announced every command in the Law to all the people, he took the 


126 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS (Ix. 15 


blood of calves and goats, together with water, scarlet wool and hyssop, sprinki- 
ing the book and all the people, and saying, *® ‘‘ This is the blood of that 
covenant which ts God’s command for you.” ™ He even (kal... 6é, only 
here in Heb.) sprinkled with blood the tent and all the utensils of worship in 
the same way. ™ In fact, one might almost say that by Law everything ts 
cleansed with blood. No blood shed no remission of sins ! 

The writer thus weaves together the idea of the new 8raOjKy 
(g!5 echoes 8°) and the idea of sacrifice which he has just been 
developing. In v.15 $14 todro carries a forward reference (“now 
this is why Christ mediates a new 8:a0yKn, Stws KTr.”), aS, 6.8, 
in Xen. Cyrop. ii. 1. 21, of o¥ppaxor ovde dv’ €v aAXO tpéehovTa 7 
Gras paxodvTat Urép Tov Tpeddvrwy. As the climax of the pro- 
mises in the new d:a6yxn is pardon (812), so here its purpose is 
described as dmodUtpwois, which obviously is equivalent to full 
forgiveness (Eph 17 ry drodttpwcw da Tod aiparos aitov, rv 
adeow Tov TapaTTwpdtuv). “Atodtitpwow Tov. . . TapaBdoewr is 
like kaOapiopov tov duapTtiav in 1%. But pardon is only the 
means to fellowship, and the full scope of what has been pro- 
mised is still to be realized. Yet it is now certain ; the “bliss to 
be” is an eternal xAynpovopia, assured by Christ. Note that the 
éml in éwt TH modty Sa0qKy is not exactly temporal = “ under,” 
t.e. during the period of (cp. émt cuvtedeta tov aiwvdy in v.26), but 
causal. The transgressions, which had arisen ‘in connexion 
with” the first dsaéyxy, like unbelief and disobedience, are 
conceived as having taken their place among men ; they are the 
standing temptations of life towards God. The writer does not 
say, with Paul, that sin became guilt in view of the law, but 
this is near to his meaning; with the first dca@yxn sins started, 
the sins that haunt the People. They are removed, for the 
penitent, by the atoning death of Jesus, so that the People are 
now unencumbered. ‘There is a similar thought in Ac 133% 39 
where Paul tells some Jews that through Jesus Christ ipiv adeots 
dpaptiov KatayyéAXerat, Kal Grd ravTwv Ov odK HOvvHOnTE ev vouw 
Moicéws dSixatwOjvat, év ToUTw mas 6 micTevwv SixkavcovTat, Fer the 
sake of emphasis, thy émayyeAtay is thrown forward, away frora 
kAnpovopias, like @dvarov in the next verse. 


*ArodUtpwots, which in 11% is used in its non-technical sense of ‘‘ release ” 
from death (at the cost of some unworthy compliance), is used here in its LXX 
religious sense of a redemption which costs much, which can only be had at 
the cost of sacrifice, The primitive idea of ‘‘ ransom ” had already begun to 
fade out of it (cp. Dn 4? ; Philo, guod omnis probus, 17), leaving ‘‘ liberation” 
at some cost as the predominant idea (so in Clem. Alex. Strom. vii. 56). 
Here it is a synonym for Avtpwots (v.!*), or as Theophylact put it, for 
deliverance. But its reference is not eschatological ; the retrospective refer- 
ence is uppermost. 


For the first and only time he employs ot kexAnpévor to 
describe those whom he had already hailed as xAjoews éxovpaviou 


IX. 15, 16.] WILL AND COVENANT 127 


p€roxot (31). To be “called” was indispensable to receiving 
God’s boon (118), so that xexAnuévor here is an appropriate term 
for those who are no longer hampered by any obstacles of an 
inadequate pardon. The xexAnpévor are the faithful People ; 
“the objects of redemption are united in one category, for the 
One and Only Sacrifice is not of the sphere of time” (Wickham). 
It is not an aoristic perfect (=xKAnOevres), as if the KexAnpévor 
were simply those under the old dva@yjxn, though these are in- 
cluded, for the sacrificial death of Jesus has a retrospective value ; 
it clears off the accumulated offences of the past. The writer 
does not work out this, any more than Paul does in Ro 375! ; but 
it may be implied in 114° 1278 (see below), where the “‘ perfecting ” 
of the older believers is connected with the atonement. How- 
ever, the special point here of @avdrou . . . mapaBdoewy is that the 
death which inaugurates the new dca6yxy deals effectively with the 
hindrances left by the former dva6yxy. Not that this is its ex- 
clusive function. That the death inaugurates an order of grace 
in which forgiveness is still required and bestowed, is taken for 
granted (e.g. 41°); but the kAnpovopta, which from the beginning 
has been held out to the People of God, has only become attain- 
able since the sacrifice of Jesus, and therefore (a) his death 
avails even for those who in the past hoped for it, yet could not 
obtain it, and also (4) deals with the wapaBaces set up by the 
older da6yxy among men. 

But how was a death necessary to a dva6yxn? The answer 
is given in v.!6! through a characteristic play on the term. In 
Strou yap (sc. €ort) SiaOHKyn xKTA. he uses diay as equivalent to 
“will” or testamentary disposition, playing effectively upon the 
double sense of the term, as Paul had already done in Gal 315, 
The point of his illustration (vv.1® 17) depends upon this; BeBata 
and ioxver are purposely used in a juristic sense, applicable to 
wills as well as to laws, and 6 8ta8€wevos is the technical term for 
“testator.” The illustration has its defects, but only when it is 
pressed beyond what the writer means to imply. A will does 
not come into force during the lifetime of the testator, and yet 
Jesus was living! ‘True, but he had died, and died inaugurating 
a $1a64jxy in words which the writer has in mind (v.2°); indeed, 
according to one tradition he had spoken of himself figuratively 
as assigning rights to his disciples (xdym diariewar tyiv, Lk 229), 
The slight incongruity in this illustration is not more than that 
involved in making Jesus both priest and victim. It is a curious 
equivoque, this double use of dvabyxn, the common idea of 
both meanings being that benefits are ‘‘disponed,” and that the 
daOyxy Only takes effect after a death. The continuity of argu- 
ment is less obvious in English, where no single word conveys 
the different nuances which 6d1a6yxn bore for Greek readers. 


128 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS [IX. 16, 17. 


Hence in v.!8 some periphrasis like “‘ the first covenant of God’s 
will” is desirable. 


That 81a84Kxy in vv.!% 7 is equivalent to ‘‘ testamentary disposition,” is 
essential to the argument. No natural interpretation of vv. is possible, 
when 6:a04xy is understood rigidly either as ‘* covenant” or as ‘‘ will.” The 
classical juristic sense is richly illustrated in the papyri and contemporary 
Hellenistic Greek, while the ‘‘covenant” meaning prevails throughout the 
LXX; but Philo had already used it in both senses, and here the juristic sense 
of «Anpovoutla (v.15) paved the way for the juristic sense which v.!” demands. 
The linguistic materials are collected, with a variety of interpretations, by 
Norton in A Lextcographical and Historical Study of AvaéyxKn (Chicago, 
1908), Behm (Der Begriff Acad Kn im Neuen Testament, Naumburg, 1912), 
Lohmeyer (AcadjKxy: etn Bettrag stir Erklarung des Neutestamentlichen 
Begriffs, Leipzig, 1913), and G. Vos in Princeton Theological Review 
(1915, pp. 587f.; 1916, pp. 1-61). 3 


In v.16 gépecbar is ‘‘announced,” almost in the sense of 
‘proved ” (as often in Greek) ; in v.17 py mote (cp. on ovr in 28) 
is not equivalent to pymw (nondum, vg) but simply means 
“never” (non unquam), as, ¢.g., in Eurip. App. 823, wore pyrore 
exrvedoar rad, wy here following the causal particle é7reé, like 
dre in Jn 348; it had begun to displace od in later Greek. 
Moulton quotes BGU. 530 (i A.D.), pepderat oe éx(e)i py avr 
ypawas airyj, and Radermacher (171) suggests that the change 
was sometimes due to a desire of avoiding the hiatus. “loyver 
has the same force as in Gal 5°, cp. Zebt. P. 2867 (ii A.D.) voy 
adduxos [ov |dev eixyve. Some needless difficulties have been felt 
with regard to the construction of the whole sentence. Thus 
(a) éwel . . . S:a0éuevos might be a question, it is urged: ‘ For 
is it ever valid so long as the testator is alive?” In Jn 7%6 
pymrote is so used interrogatively, but there it opens the sen- 
tence. This construction goes back to the Greek fathers 
Oecumenius and Theophylact; possibly it was due to the 
feeling that pymrore could not be used in a statement like this. 
(2) Isidore of Pelusium (Zf. iv. 113) declares that wére is a 
corruption of rére (NM from T, a stroke being added. by accident), 
and that he found rore “év maXdaots avtvypados.” Two old 
MSS (x* D*) do happen to preserve this reading, which is in 
reality a corruption of rote. 

Why, it may be asked, finally, does not the writer refer 
outright to the new d.aéyxn as inaugurated at the last supper? 
The reason is plain. Here as throughout the epistle he ignores 
the passover or eucharist. As a non-sacerdotal feast, the pass- 
over would not have suited his argument. Every Israelite was his 
own priest then, as Philo remarks (De Decalogo, 30, raoya .. . 
év 7 Qovor wavdypuel aitOv ExacTos Tovs iepets aitOv ovK dvapévovTes, 
iepwovvyv TOU Vopov xXaploapévov TO EOver TavTl Kata play Hycpay 
xtd.). Hence the absence of a passover ritual from the entire 


IX. 17-19. | THE SINAI COVENANT 129 


argument of the epistle, and also perhaps his failure to employ 
it here, where it would have been extremely apt. 

Reverting now to the other and biblical sense of 8ra0qxn, the 
writer (vv.!®) recalls how the d:a0yKy at Sinai was inaugurated 
with blood. “Oev—since diabyxn and Oavatos are correlative— 
ob8é  mpdty (sc. dvaOyKn) xwpis aipatos évKexaiviotar (the verb 
here and in 10”? being used in its ordinary LXX sense, e.g., 1 K 
1114 éyxawiowpev éexet THY Baciretav, 1 Mac 4° dvaBdpuev Kabapioa 
Ta ayia Kat évkatvioat). This fresh illustration of death or blood 
being required in order to inaugurate a d:ay«n, is taken from the 
story in Ex 24%, but he treats it with characteristic freedom. 
Five points may be noted. (i) He inserts! 76 atpa ... tov 
tpdywy, a slip which was conscientiously corrected by a number 
of MSS which omitted xat tov tpdyw (N° K LW 5. 181. 203. 
242. 487. 489. 506. 623. 794. 917. 1311. 1319. 1739. 1827. 1836. 
1845. 1898. 2143) as well as by syr Origen and Chrysostom. 
Moses merely had pooxdpia slaughtered ; our author adds goats, 
perhaps because the full phrase had become common for OT 
sacrifices (see on v.}%). (i1) He inserts peta bSatos Kai épiou 
KOKKivoU Kat Uoowrou, as these were associated in his mind with 
the general ritual of sprinkling; water, hyssop, and scarlet 
thread (xéxxwov), for example, he remembered from the de- 
scription of another part of the ritualin Nu 1g. The water was 
used to dilute the blood; and stems of a small wall plant called 
“‘hyssop” were tied with scarlet wool (kexdwopévoy kédxkivov) to 
form a sprinkler in the rite of cleansing a leper (Lv 14%), or for 
sprinkling blood (Ex 12%"). But of this wisp or bunch there is 
not a word in Ex 24, (iii) Nor is it said in the OT that 
Moses sprinkled? aérd 1d BiBdiov. He simply splashed half of 
the blood zpds 76 Ovovacrypiov, kai AaBov 70 BiBXéov (Z.e. the scroll 
containing the primitive code) tijs 8va0qKxys, read it aloud to the 
people, who promised obedience ; whereupon AaBov d€ Moves 
TO aipa KaTecKeoacey TOD Aaod Kal eiev kTA. AN ingenious but 
impracticable attempt to correct this error is to take aété te 16 
BiBXtov with AaBdy, but the te goes with the next kat mdvta tov 
hady. The BiBdrAvov may have been included, since as a human 
product, for all its divine contents, it was considered to require 
cleansing ; in which case the mention of it would lead up to v.”!, 
and aiété te 7d BiBAtev might be rendered ‘“‘the book itself.” 
This intensive use of airds occurs just below in aéta ta éroupdvea 
But atrds may be, according to the usage of Hellenistic Greek, 


1In mdons évro\js Kata Tov (om. n* K P) vduov (“ecto omni mandato 
legis,” vg) the xardé means ‘‘ throughout ” rather than ‘‘ by.” 

2¥or xarecxédacev he substitutes éppavricev, from payrifw, which is com- 
paratively rare in the LXX (Lv 6”, 2 K 9®, Ps 51’, Aquila and Symm. in 
Is 63°, Aquila and Theodotion in Is 5215), 


9 


I30 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS [IX. 19-22 


unemphatic, as, ég., in 11!) kat airy 2dppa, jn 2°4 airds dé 6 
"Incovs. (iv) In quoting the LXX i8od 76 alua rHs Suadqays 7 nS 
dueMero Kupios mpos tyas (= tpiv), he changes idod into rovro 
(possibly a reminiscence of the synoptic tradition in Mk 14%), 
dueBero into éverethato (after évtodfs in v.19; but the phrase 
occurs elsewhere, though with the dative, eg. Jos 2316), and 
KUptos Tpos Duas into mpds Has 6 Beds. This is a minor altera- 
tion. It is more significant that, (v) following a later Jewish 
tradition, which reappears in Josephus (Ant. iti. 8. 6 [Moses 
cleansed Aaron and his sons] THY TE oKnVTY Kal TO. mepl abray 
TKEvY eLaiw TE mpoOvpiwpevn Kabas elroy, Kat TO atpare TOV TAvpwv 
kal kptov opayevtwy xtX.), he makes Moses use blood to sprinkle 
the oxyvi and all 7a oxedy Tis AevToupyias (a phrase from 1 Ch 9”8). 
The account of Ex 40%? mentions oil only; Josephus adds 
blood, because the tradition he followed fused the oil-dedication 
of the oxyvy in Ex 40% 1° with the (oil) sprinkling at the con- 
secration of the priests (Lv 81%), which was followed by a blood- 
sprinkling of the altar alone. Philo had previously combined 
the oil-dedication of the oxyvy with the consecration of the 
priests (vit. Mos. ili. 17); but he, too, is careful to confine any 
blood-sprinkling to the altar. Our author, with his predilection 
for blood as a cathartic, omits the oil altogether, and extends 
the blood to everything. 

This second illustration (wv.'**) is not quite parallel to the 
first ; the death in the one case is of a human being in the course 
of nature, in the other case of animals slaughtered. But atpa 
and @dvaros were correlative terms for the writer. The vital 
necessity of aiua in this connexion is reiterated in the summary 
of v.22. Zxeddv, he begins—for there were exceptions to the rule 
that atonement for sins needed an animal sacrifice (e.g. Lv 51-}, 
where a poverty-stricken offender could get remission by present. 
ing a handful of flour, and Nu 3122, where certain articles, spoils 
of war, are purified by fire or water). But the general rule was 
that mdyta, ze. everything connected with the ritual and every 
worshipper, priest, or layman, had to be ceremonially purified by 
means of blood (ka@apiferar as the result of éppdyticev). The 
Greek readers of the epistle would be familiar with the similar 
rite of aiudooeww Tovs Bewpous (Theokr. Zfzgr. i. 5, etc.). Finally, 
he sums up the position under the first dvaOjxn by coining a term 
aipatekxuota (from éexxvots alparos, 1 K 1878 etc.) for the shedding 
of an animal victim’s blood in sacrifice; xwpis aiwatexxuctas ob 
yiverat Geots, Ze. even the limited pardon, in the shape of 
*‘cleansing,” which was possible under the old order. “Ageous 
here as in Mk 37° has no genitive following, but the sense is 
indubitable, in view of 10!8 Sou 8€ adpeots TodTwy (te. of siuts). 
The latter passage voices a feeling which seems te contradict the 


IX. 22.| THE SACRIFICE OF CHRIST 131 


possibility of any forgiveness prior to the sacrifice of Christ (cp. 
95 104), but the writer knew from his bible that there had 
been an adeors under the old régime as the result of animal 
sacrifice ; Kal efiAdoerau wept (or rept THs auaprias) adTod 6 lepers 
... Kal adpeOyoerar adr@ was the formula (cp. Lv 519 16. 18 etc), 
The underlying principle of the argument is practically (cp. 
Introd., p. xlii) that laid down in the Jewish tract Joma v. 1 
(“there is no expiation except by blood”), which quotes Lv 171), 
a text known to the writer of Hebrews in this form: 7 yap wv x7) 
Taons capKos atua airod éativ, Kal éyw dédwxa aird buly emt rod 
Ovovacrypiov éfiAdcKec Oat rept TOV Woxdv bpOv* TO yap atwa atrod 
avrt THs Wuxns e€tAdcerat. Blood as food is prohibited, since 
blood contains the vital principle ; as there is a mysterious potency 
in it, which is to be reserved for rites of purification and expiation, 
by virtue of the life in it, this fluid is efficacious as an atonement. 
The Greek version would readily suggest to a reader like our 
author that the piacular efficacy of aiwa was valid universally, 
and that the atwoa or sacrificial death of Christ was required in 
order that human sin might be removed. Why such a sacrifice, 
why sacrifice at all, was essential, he did not ask. It was com- 
manded by God in the bible; that was sufficient for him. The 
vital point for him was that, under this category of sacrifice, the 
aiua of Christ superseded all previous arrangements for securing 
pardon. 

After the swift aside of v.?2, the writer now pictures the 
appearance of Christ in the perfect sanctuary of heaven with the 
perfect sacrifice (vv.75!) which, being perfect or absolute, needs 
no repetition. 


28 Now, while the copies of the heavenly things had (dvdyxn, sc. Fv or 
éotlv) to be cleansed with sacrifices like these, the heavenly things themselves 
required nobler sacrifices. 4 For Christ has not entered a holy place which 
human hands have made (a mere type of the reality !) ; he has entered heaven 
itself, now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf. * Nor was it (sc. 
elanAOev) to offer himself repeatedly, like the highprtest entering the holy place 
every year with blood that was not his own: *8 for in that case he would have 
had to suffer repeatedly ever since the world was founded. Nay, once for all, 
at the end of the world, he has appeared with hts self-sacrifice to abolish sin. 
7 And just as tt is appointed for men to die once and after that to be judged, 
8 so Christ, after being once sacrificed to bear the sins of many, will appear 
again, not to deal with sin, but for the saving of those who look out for him. 


The higher oxyv7 requires a nobler kind of sacrifice than its 
material copy on earth (v.?%),! This would be intelligible enough ; 


1 For dvdyxn . . . kadaplfeo@a an early variant was dvdyxyn. . . kadapl- 
tera (D* 424** Origen), which Blass adopts. But our author prefers the 
nominative (v.36) to the dative, and xa@apiferat is no more than a conforma- 
tion to the xa@apifera: of v.22. The re, which some cursives (33. 1245. 2005) 
substitute for 6é between aird and ra éroupdvia, is due to alliteration, 


132 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS (Ix. 23-26 


but when the writer pushes the analogy so far as to suggest that 
the sacrifice of Christ had, among other effects, to purify heaven 
itself, the idea becomes almost fantastic. The nearest parallel to 
this notion occurs in Col 17°; but the idea here is really unique, 
as though the constant work of forgiving sinners in the upper 
oxnvy rendered even that in some sense defiled. The slight 
touch of disparagement in tottors (=Totis déAdyous, Theodoret) 
may be conveyed by “like these” or “such,” and @uotats is the 
plural of category (like vexpots in v.!”). After this passing lapse 
into the prosaic, the writer quickly recovers himself in a passage 
of high insight (vv.24£) upon the nobler sacrifice of Jesus. In- 
deed, even as he compares it with the levitical sacrifices, its 
incomparable power becomes more and more evident. In v.*4 
(=vv.11 12) by dvtitura trav dédynOwdv he means a counterpart 
(avrirurov in reverse sense in I P 3?!) of reality (cp. 87), avrirura 
being a synonym here for tzode/ypara, literally = ‘‘answering to 
the tures” which was shown to Moses (cp. 2 Clem. 14° otdeis ody 
TO avtiturov POcipas TO avfevTiKov petradnera). Christ has 
entered the heavenly sphere vév (emphatic, “now at last” = 1?) 
énpavicOivar KTrAX. In éuhanobjva: TO mpoodmw tod Beod (cp. Ps 
423 6dOjoopat TO tpocwTw Tov Geov) we have éudavilew used in 
its Johannine sense (147! 22), though passively as in Wis 1? 
(€udavilerar Tols pi miaTevovotv aiT®). But the appearance is 
before God on behalf of men, and the meaning is brought out in 
726 rol Christ’s sacrifice, it is held, provides men with a 
close and continuous access to God such as no cultus could 
effect; it is of absolute value, and therefore need not be re- 
peated (vy.%- 26), as the levitical sacrifices had to be. O88 tva 
TohdKts Tpoodépy Eautov| What is meant precisely by rpoodépev 
éavtov here (as in v.1*) is shown by waGety in v.25, ‘There is 
no difference between entering in and offering. The act of 
entering in and offering is one highpriestly act” (A. B. Davidson), 
and mpoodépew éavrov is inseparably connected with the suffering 
of death upon the cross. The contrast between his self-sacrifice 
and the highpriest entering with aipatt dd\dotpiw (as opposed to 
idiw, v.!2) is thrown in, as a reminiscence of vv.", but the writer 
does not dwell on this; it is the Gag (cp. v.!2and 1 P 3!8 Xpiords 
amag wept duaptiov drefavev) which engrosses his mind in v.26, érret 
(“‘alioquin,” vg) €Se. (the av being omitted as, ¢g., in 1 Co 510 
éel @peidere . . . eSeAMetv) wtA. According to his outlook, there 
would be no time to repeat Christ’s incarnation and sacrifice 
before the end of the world, for that was imminent; hence he 
uses the past, not the future, for his veductio ad absurdum argu- 
ment. If Christ’s sacrifice had not been of absolute, final value, 
te. if it had merely availed for a brief time, as a temporary 
provision, it would have had to be done over and over again in 


IX. 26, 27.] THE SACRIFICE OF CHRIST 133 


previous ages, since from the first sinful man has needed sacrifice ; 
whereas the only time he was seen on earth was once, late in the 
evening of the world. It is implied that Christ as the Son of 
God was eternal and pre-existent ; also that when his sacrifice 
did take place, it covered sins of the past (see v.15), the single 
sacrifice of Christ in our day availing for all sin, past as well as 
present and future. Had it not been so, God could not have 
left it till so late in the world’s history ; it would have had to be 
done over and over again to meet the needs of men from the 
outset of history. Nuvi 8é (logical, as in 8°, not temporal) én 
ouytedeta (for which Blass arbitrarily reads réAe) tov aidver (= ér 
€oXaTov TOV HuEpOv TovTwY, 17) KTA. LuvTédeca 1s employed in its 
ordinary Hellenistic sense of ‘‘ conclusion” (e.g. Zest. Benj. xi. 3, 
€ws ouvteAcias Tov aiavos: Zest. Levi x. 2, éri tH ovvredcia tov 
aidvwv); in Matthew’s gospel, where alone in the NT it 
occurs, the genitive is Tod aidvos. Nedavépwrat, as in the 
primitive hymn or confession of faith (1 Ti 31° éfavepwby év 
gapxi); but the closest parallel is in 1 P 17° Xpicrod zpoey- 
vwopevov pev mpd KataBoAns Kdcpov, Pavepwhevtos dé éx’ érxdrov 
tav xpovwv. The object of the incarnation is, as in 2%, the 
atonement. 

The thought of the first “appearance” of Christ naturally 
suggests that of the second, and the thought of Jesus dying dag 
also suggests that men have to die drag as well. Hence the 
parenthesis of vv.27- 28, for 10! carries on the argument from 976, 
It is a parenthesis, yet a parenthesis of central importance for 
the primitive religious eschatology which formed part of the 
writer’s inheritance, however inconsistent with his deeper views 
of faith and fellowship. ‘‘As surely as men have once to die 
and then to face the judgment, so Christ, once sacrificed for the 
sins of men, will reappear to complete the salvation of his own.” 
*Atéxettar (cp. Longinus, de sublim. 9’ GAN jpiv pev dvodatpovor- 
ow amoxettar Aypnv KakOv 6 Oavaros, and 4 Mac 8" ovdev spiv 
areOyoacw mAnv Tod peta otpeBAGv amoGavety arroKetTaL) Tots 
évOparrots Gtrag dwoavetv. The dag here is not by way of relief, 
although the Greeks consoled themselves by reflecting that 
they had not to die twice; as they could only live once, they 
drew from this the conclusion that life must be “all the 
sweeter, as an experience that never can be repeated” (A. C. 
Pearson on Sophocles’ /ragments, n. 67). But our author (see 
on 214) sees that death is not the last thing to be faced by 
men; peta 8€ toto xplots. This was what added serious- 
ness to the prospect of death for early Christians. The Greek 
mind was exempt from such a dread; for them death ended 
the anxieties of life, and if there was one thing of which 
the Greek was sure, it was that “dead men rise up never.” 


134 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS _ [IX. 27, 28. 


Aeschylus, for example, makes Apollo declare (Zumenides, 647, 
648) : 
dvdpos 8 éredav aly dvaomdaoy Kovis 
amaé Oavovtos, ovTis éor avacracts. 

Even in the sense of a return to life, there is no avaoracts 
(Eurip. Heracles, 297; Alcestis, 1076; Supplices, 775). Kptors in 
En 1"! (kat kpiow €orat kata mavTwv), as the context shows, is 
the eschatological catastrophe which spares the elect on earth, 
just as in En 5%, which parallels He 98, sinners are threatened 
thus: waow duty rots duaptwAots ody trapfe owrnpia adAa eri 
mavtas buas KatdAvots, katapa. In 107” below xptoig means the 
doom of the rebellious, but that is due to the context ; here it is 
judgment in general, to which all dv@pwro alike are liable (122% 
Kpitn Ged mavrwv). Only, some have the happy experience of 
Christ’s return (v.78), in the saving power of his sacrifice. There 
is (as in 1 P 2%) an echo of Is 53!% (kat atrés duaprias roAAGy 
dvyveykev) in eis Td ToAdGy (cp. above on 21°) dveveyxety Guaptias. 
MpocevexGeis may be chosen to parallel men’s passive experience 
of death. At any rate his suffering of death was vicarious suffer- 
ing ; he took upon himself the consequences and responsibilities 
of our sins. Such is the Christ who éx Seutépou dgOjoerar. In 
1 P 54 gavepotobar is used of the second appearance as well as 
of the first, but our author prefers a variety (see on v.%°) of 
expression. ‘The striking phrase xwpts dpaptias rests on the idea 
that the one atonement had been final (eis a0éryow Hs dpaprtias), 
and that Christ was now xexwptopevos dtd tév éuaptwddy (776), 
He is not coming back to die, and without death sin could not 
be dealt with. The homiletic (from 2 Ti 3!5) addition of 84 
(ris, 1611. 2005) wiotews, either after daexdexopevors (by 38. 68. 
218. 256. 263. 330. 436. 440. 462. 823. 1837 arm. etc.) or after 
owtyptay (by A P 1245. 1898 syr'™'), is connected with the mis- 
taken idea that eis cwrnpiay goes with daexdexopevois (cp. Phil 32°) 
instead of with é@jcerar. There is a very different kind of 
€xd3ox7 (102’) for some avOpwor, even for some who once belonged 
to the People! 

He now resumes the idea of 9*°- 26, expanding it by showing 
how the personal sacrifice of Jesus was final. This is done by 
quoting a passage from the goth psalm which predicted the 
supersession of animal sacrifices (vv.5!0), The latter are in- 
adequate, as is seen from the fact of their annual repetition ; and 
they are annual because they are animal sacrifices. 

1 For as the Law has a mere shadow of the bliss that ts to be, instead of 
representing the reality of that bliss, tt never can perfect those who draw near 
with the same annual sacrifices that are perpetually offered. * Otherwise, 


they would have surely ceased to be offered ; for the worshippers, once cleansed, 
would no longer be conscious of sins! * As tt ts, they are an annual reminder 


Akl 


> ya Hy THE FORTIETH PSALM 135 


if sins ‘(for the blood of bulls and goats cannot possibly remove sins !). 
Hence, on entering the world he says, 


‘* Thou hast no destre for sacrifice or offering ; 
it ts a body thou hast prepared for me— 
6 in holocausts and sin-offerings (wept duaprias as 1311) thou 
takest no delight. 
7 So (rére) L said, ‘ Here I come—in the roll of the book this 
7s written of me— 
I come to do thy will, O God.’” 


8 He begins by saying, ‘‘ Thou hast no desire for, thou takest no delight in, 
sacrifices and offerings and holocausts and sin-offerings” (and those are what 
are offered in terms of the Law), ° he then (r6re) adds, ‘* Here I come to do 
thy will.” He does away with the first in order to establish the second. 
10 And it ts by thts ‘‘ will” that we are consecrated, because Jesus Christ once 
Jor all has ‘‘ offered” up his ‘‘ body.” 


This is the authors final verdict on the levitical cultus, 
“rapid in utterance, lofty in tone, rising from the didactic style 
of the theological doctor to the oracular speech of the Hebrew 
prophet, as in that peremptory sentence: ‘It is not possible that 
the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins.’ The 
notable thing in it is, not any new line of argument, though that 
element is not wanting, but the series of spiritual intuitions it 
contains, stated or hinted, in brief, pithy phrases” (A. B. Bruce, 
PP 373) 374): In okay... obk eixdva Ta Tpaypdrov (v. 1) the 
writer uses a Platonic phrase (Cratylus, 306 E, eixovas rév mpary- 
parwv) ; €eiKov (= aAnGea, Chrysostom) is contrasted with oxia 
as the real expression or representation of substance is opposed 
to the faint shadow. The addition of trav rpayparwy (= Tov 
péAAovtwy ayafdv) emphasizes this sense; what represents solid 
realities is itself real, as compared to a mere oxid. The péddovta 
dyabd (914) are the boons and blessings still to be realized in 
their fulness for Christians, being thought of from the stand- 
point of the new daOyxy, not of the Law. The Law is for 
the writer no more than the regulations which provided for the 
cultus ; the centre of gravity in the Law lies in the priesthood 
(711) and its sacrifices, not in what were the real provisions of 


the Law historically. The writer Se RT eT ane 
itself. When he does so, as here, if is in this special ritual 


and the new d.ad7xn, ze. the inadequate and the adequate 


piheotd an what really bulks i in his view is the contrast between 
eo 


‘forms of relationship-to ~“God> Once the former was superseded, 
~the Law collapsed, and under the new 8.ajxy there is no new 


Law. Even while the Law lasted, it was shadowy and ineffective, 
i.e. aS a means of securing due access to God. And this is the 
point here made against the Law, not as Paul conceived it, but 
as the system of atoning animal sacrifices, ; 


The text of v.! has been tampered ‘with at an early stage, though the 
variants affect the grammar rather than the general sense. Unless Svvatat 


Go 


136 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS [xX. 1, 2. 


(DHKLW¥2. 5. 35. 88. 181. 206. 226. 241. 242. 255. 326: 383. 429. 431. 
547. 623. 794. 915. 917. 927. 1311. 1518. 1739. 1827. 1836. 1845. 1867. 
1873. 1898. 2143 lat boh Orig. Chrys. Thdt. Oec.) is read for dvvavrat, ¢ 
véuos is a hanging nominative, and an awkward anacolouthon results. Hort 
suggests that the original form of the text was: Kka@ v Kar’ éviaurov Tas adras 
Ouclas mporpépovowy, al els Td Oinvexes ovdérore SUvavTat Tos TporEpXomévous 
redeoat. As in 9%, xaé’ jv (dropped out by a scribe accidentally, owing to 
the resemblance between KAOHN and KAOEN) would connect with a previous 
noun (here oxidv), dt similarly fell out before €1 (€1c), and ac was changed 
into alc in the three consecutive words after évavrév. This still leaves 6 
véuos without a verb, however, and is no improvement upon the sense gained 
either (a) by treating 6 vépos as a nominative absolute, and dvvayra as an 
irregular plural depending on al understood! from @valats ; or (6) by simply 
reading dvvarat (so Delitzsch, Weiss, Westcott, Peake, Riggenbach, Blass), 
which clears up everything. A desire to smooth out the grammar or to 
bring out some private interpretation may be underneath changes like the 
addition of atrév after @vaiats (& P), or the substitution of adrady for abrats 
(69. 1319), or the omission of avrais altogether (2. 177. 206. 642. 920. 1518. 
1872), as well as the omission of ds (A 33. 1611. 2005) or als altogether, like 
the Syriac and Armenian versions, and the change of TeAev@oan (reAeOou, 
Blass) into ka@apioat (D vt). 


Npoopépovow is an idiomatic use of the plural (Mt 27° reOyy- 
xaow, Lk 129 airotovv), ‘ where there is such a suppression of the 
subject in bringing emphasis upon the action, that we get the 
effect of a passive, or of French om”, German man” (Moulton, i. 
58). The allusion is to the yearly sacrifice on atonement-day, 
for rpoodepovow goes with kat évautdv, the latter phrase being 
thrown forward for the sake of emphasis, and also in order to 
avoid bringing eis 1d Sinvexés too near it. Eis 76 dunvexés also 
goes with mpoodépovow, not (as in v.14) with reAcodv. OdS¢roTeE 
here as in v.11 before 8uva(v)rat (never elsewhere in the epistle) is 
doubly emphatic from its position. The constant repetition of 
these sacrifices proves that their effect is only temporary; they 
cannot possibly bring about a lasting, adequate relationship to 
God. So our author denies the belief of Judaism that atone- 
ment-day availed for the pardon of the People, a belief explicitly 
put forward, e.g.,in Jub 517-38 (“If they turn to Him in righteous- 
ness, He will forgive all their transgressions, and pardon all their 
sins. It is written and ordained that He will show mercy to all 
who turn from their guilt once a year”). He reiterates this in 
v.2, where émet (as in 9?6=alioquin) is followed by odx, which 
implies a question. ‘Would they not, otherwise, have ceased 
to be offered?” When this was not seen, either odx was omitted 
(H* vg? syr 206. 1245. 1518 Primasius, etc.), leaving év out of 
its proper place, or it was suggested—as would never have 
occurred to the author—that the OT sacrifices ceased to be valid 

1It is inserted by A** 31. 366. 472. 1319 syrb*! arm. If the relative 


pronoun were assimilated, z.e. if afs (D* H L 5. 88. 257. 547, etc.) were read 
for ds, the accidental omission of ai would be more intelligible. 


X. 2-4.) SACRIFICE PERFECT AND IMPERFECT 137 


when the Christian sacrifice took place. In odx av ématoavto 
mpoopepdspevat (for construction see Gn 118 ératvcavro oixodo- 
povvtes) the av is retained (see on 976). KekaBaptopévous has 
been altered into kexa@dppevous (L), but xafapifw, not the Attic 
kaaipw, is the general NT form. If our author spelt like his 
LXX codex, however, xexafepurpéevovs would be original (cp. 
Thackeray, 74). ZuveiSnors is again used (9%) in connexion with 
‘the worshipper(s),” but the writer adds dépaptiéy (ze. sins still 
needing to be pardoned). For the genitive, compare Philo’s 
fine remark in guod det. pot. 40, ixerevopmev otv Tov Gedy oi 
cuveonoer TOV oiketwy GdiKnuaTwv éeyxopevol, KoAdoaL padov 
nas 7 mapetvat. In v.? dévadpvynows means that public notice had 
to be taken of such sins (“‘commemoratio,” vg). 

There is possibly an echo here of a passage like Nu 5!° (@vcla pynpoodtvou 
dvapupvjocKovoa auaptlav), quoted by Philo in de Plant. 25 to illustrate his 
statement that the sacrifices of the wicked simply serve to recall their misdeeds 
(UromipynoKovoa Tas ExdoTwv ayvolas Te Kal diamaprias). In vita Mosis, iii. 
10, he repeats this ; if the sacrificer was ignorant and wicked, the sacrifices 
were no sacrifices (.. . o¥ Avow duaprnudrwy, adn brburvnow épydtovrar), 
What Philo declares is the result of sacrifices offered by the wicked, the 
author of Hebrews declares was the result of all sacrifices; they only served 
to bring sin to mind. So in de Victims, 7, etnOes yap Tas Ovolas tiréuvnow 
apaprnudrwyv adrAa wn ANOnv avrdv xaracxevafeyv—what Philo declares absurd, 
our author pronounces inevitable. 

The ringing assertion of v.* voices a sentiment which would 
appeal strongly to readers who had been familiar with the 
classical and contemporary protests (cp. “AZ, ill. 770%), against 
ritual and external sacrifice as a means of moral purification 
(see above on g}%). “Adatpetvy, a LXX verb in this connexion 
(e.g. Num 14}8 adgatpav avopuias Kai adixias Kal dpaptias), becomes 
adeAety in L (so Blass), the aoristic and commoner form; the 
verb is never used elsewhere in the NT, though Paul once 
quotes Is 279 6rav ddeAwpar Guaptias (Ro 1127), All this inherent 
defectiveness of animal sacrifices necessitated a new sacrifice 
altogether (v.° 60), the self-sacrifice of Jesus. So the writer 
quotes Ps 407%, which in A runs as follows: 

Ovoiay Kat mpoodopav ovK 7OéAnoas, 
copa b€ Katypticw pot’ 
dAokavTwpata Kal wept dpaptias ovk élnrycas. 
ToTe elzrov’ idov HK, 
(ev xepadrid. BiBrtov yéypamrat epi euod) 
Tov mommoat TO OéAnpd cov, 6 Oeds pov, HBovdAnOnv. 
Our author reads evddxnoas for éfnrijoas,' shifts 6 Oeds (omitting mov) to 





1 Which is replaced in the text of Hebrews by © (éxf{nrjoes) 623*. 1836. 
The augment spelling yvdéxnoas reappears here as occasionally at v.8 in a 
small group (A C D* W, etc.), and the singular Ovclay x. rpoogopdy is kept 
at v.8 by x D°K LW, etc. 


138 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS [x. 4-9, 


a position after movjoa1, in order to emphasize 76 GX gov, and by omitting 
éBovrHOny (replaced by W in v.”), connects Tod rojoat closely with #xw. 
A recollection of Ps 511% ef 70é\noas Ouvclav . . . ddAoKavTa@para ovK EevSoKHoELS 
may have suggested evdéxnoas, which takes the accusative as often in LXX. 
KegaNls is the roll or scroll, literally the knob or tip of the stick round which 
the papyrus sheet was rolled (cp. Ezek 2° xepandls BiBXlov). 

This is taken as an avowal of Christ on entering the world, 
and the LXX mistranslation in gpa is the pivot of the argu- 
ment. The more correct translation would be dria dé, for the 
psalmist declared that God had given him ears for the purpose 
of attending to the divine monition to do the will of God, 
instead of relying upon sacrifices. Whether éria was corrupted 
into o@ua, or whether the latter was an independent translation, 
is of no moment; the evidence of the LXX text is indecisive. 
Our author found céua in his LXX text and seized upon it; 
Jesus came with his body to do God’s will, #e. to die for the 
sins of men. The parenthetical phrase év kepadtd. BiBXtou 
yéypamto. mepi énod, which originally referred to the Deutero- 
nomic code prescribing obedience to God’s will, now becomes 
a general reference to the OT as a prediction of Christ’s higher 
sacrifice ; that is, if the writer really meant anything by it (he | 
does not transcribe it, when he comes to the interpretation, 
vv.*f), Though the LXX mistranslated the psalm, however, it 
did not alter its general sense. The Greek text meant practicallv 
what the original had meant, and it made this interpretation on 
application possible, namely, that there was a sacrifice which 
answered to the will of God as no animal sacrifice could. Only, 
our author takes the will of God as requiring some sacrifice. 
The point_of his argument is not a contrast between animal 
saltter SM hook obelisaSe to the will of God; it is a 
contrast between the death of an-animal which Cannot enter into 
the meaning of what is being done, and the death of Jesus which 
means the free acceptance by him of all that God requires for 
the expiation of human sin. ‘To do the will-of God is, for-our 
author, a sacrificial action, which involved for Jesus an atoning 
death, and this is the thought underlying his exposition and 
application of the psalm (vv.80)~ In v.8 évérepoy is above” or 
“higher up” in the quotation (v.6). The interpretation of the 
oracle which follows is plain; there are no textual variants worth 
notice,! and the language is clear. Thus eipynxev in v.® is the 
perfect of a completed action, =the saying stands on record, and 
dvatpet has its common juristic sense of “ abrogate,” the opposite 
of torn. The rusia eee is: Jesus entered the world fully 
conscious that the-Various sacrifices of the ] aw Were unavailin 
aS means of atonement, and ready-to sacrifice himself_in order 


1 The vocative 6 Geds is sometimes repeated after mofioar by x° L 104. 
1288. 1739 vg syst and pesh etc,, or after gov (é.g. I. 1311 harl, arm). 





X. 9, 10. ] THE FINAL SACRIFICE 139 


to carry out the redeeming will of God. God’s will was to 
bring-his People into close fellowship with himself (2!°); this 
necessitated a sacrifice such as that-which the cdyua of Christ 
could alone provide. The triumphant conclusion is that this 
divine will, which had no interest in ordinary sacrifices, has been 
fulfilled in the mpoogopd of Christ; what the Law could not do 
(v.1) has been achieved by the single self-sacrifice of Christ ; it 
is by what he suffered in his body, not by any animal sacrifices, 
that we are jytacpevo (v.1°), Jesus chose to obey God’s will; 
but, while the Psalmist simply ranked moral obedience higher 
than any animal sacrifice, our writer ranks the moral obedience 
of Jesus as redeemer above all such sacrifices. ‘Christ did not 
come into the world to be a good man: it was not for this that 
a body was prepared for him. He came to be a great High 
Priest, and the body was prepared for him, that by the offering 
of it he might put sinful men for ever into the perfect religious 
relation to.God” (Denney, Zhe Death of Christ, p. 234). 

4¥1n conclusion (11-18) the writer interprets (1!) a phrase which 
he has not yet noticed expressly, namely, that Christ sat down 
at the right hand of God (1°-1*); this proves afresh that his 
sacrifice was final. Then, having quoted from the pentateuch 
and the psalter, he reverts to the prophets (1518), citing again 
the oracle about the new da6y«7 with its prediction, now fulfilled, 
of a final pardon. 


Again, while every priest stands daily at his service, offering the same 
sacrifices repeatedly, sacrifices which never can take sins away—"™ He offered 
a single sacrifice for sins and then ‘‘ seated himself” for all time ‘‘at the 
right hand of God,” * to wait ‘‘ until hts enemtes are made a footstool for his 
feet.” 4 For by a single offering he has made the sanctified perfect for all 
time. % Besides, we have the testimony of the holy Spirit ; for after saying, 

16 << This ts the covenant I will make with them when that day comes, 

satth the Lord, 
I will set my laws upon their hearts, 
inscribing them upon their minds,” 


he adds, 


7 ** 4nd their sins and breaches of the law I will remember no more.” 
18 Now where these are remitted (decors, as 9°"), an offering for sin extsts (sc. 
ésr.) no longer. 


One or two textual difficulties emerge in this passage. In v.!! tepevs was 
altered (after 51 8%) into dpxvepevs (A C P 5. 69. 88. 206. 241. 256. 263. 436. 
462. 467. 489. 623. 642. 794. 917. 920. 927. 999. 1836. 1837. 1898 syrbkl* 
sah arm eth Cyr. Cosm.). In v.! aités (K L 104. 326 boh Theod. Oec. 
Theophyl.) is no improvement upon ofros. A curious variant (boh Ephr.) 
in the following words is éavrév wlavy brép apuapridy mpocevéyKas Ouclav. 
In v.4 boh (‘‘ for one offering will complete them, who will be sanctified, 
for ever”) appears to have read mid yap mporpopd (so Bgl.) reAewwoet KTr. 
In v.16 trav Stavorev is read by K L ¥ drsyr sah boh arm. 


The decisive consideration in favour of tepeds (v.1!) is not that 


140 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS [xX. 11-14, 


the dpxvepevs did not sacrifice daily (for the writer believed this, 
see on 727), but the adjective mas. Mepedetv is a literary synonym 
for ddpatpety (v.4); there is no special emphasis in the verb here 
any more than, ¢.g., in 2 Co 3}, for the (Zeph 3) zepueiXe xvpios 
7a Gdukypata cov) metaphorical idea of stripping no longer 
attached to the term, and the wepé had ceased to mean “ entirely ” 
or “altogether.” The contrast between this repeated and in- 
effective ritual of the priests and the solitary, valid sacrifice of 
Jesus is now drawn in v.!%, where ets Td Sinvexés goes more 
effectively with éxd@icev than with mpooevéyxas Ouciav, since the 
idea in the latter collocation is at once expressed in v.14 At the 
opening of the writer’s favourite psalm (1101) lay a promise of 
God to his Son, which further proved that this sacrifice of Christ 
was final : 


elev 6 KUpLos TO KUpiw pov Kabov éx defdv pov 
a Oe ~ A 
éws Gv 00 Tois €xOpovs cov bromdd.ory TOV TOOOV COV. 


Kafov—a unique privilege ; so Christ’s priestly sacrifice must be 
done and over, all that remains for him being to await the sub- 
mission and homage of his foes. As for the obedient (5%), they. 
are perfected “finally,” ze. brought into the closest relation to 
God, by what he has done for them; no need for him to stand 
at any priestly service on their behalf, like the levitical drudges ! 
The contrast is between éxd@icev and éornxey (the attitude of a 
priest who has to be always ready for some sacrifice). Who the 
foes of Christ are, the writer never says. This militant metaphor 
was not quite congruous with the sacerdotal metaphor, although 
he found the two side by side in the rroth psalm... If he inter- 
preted the prediction as Paul did in 1 Co 15%", we might think 
of the devil (2!*) and such supernatural powers of evil; but this 
is not an idea which is worked out in Mpés “EBpatous. The 
conception belonged to the primitive messianic faith of the 
church, and the writer takes it up for a special purpose of his 
own, but he cannot interpret it, as Paul does, of an active reign of 
Christ during the brief interval before the end. Christ must 
reign actively, Paul argues. Christ: must sit, says our writer. 


The usual variation between the LXX éx Sefvav and ev Sefug is reproduced 
in IIpés ‘EBpaiovs: the author prefers the latter, when he is not definitely 
quoting from the LXX as in 17%. As this is a reminiscence rather than a 
citation, év defi¢ is the true reading, though éx def:Hv is introduced by A 104 
Athanasius. The theological significance of the idea is discussed in Dr. A. 
J. Tait’s monograph on 7he Heavenly Session of our Lord (1912), in which 
he points out the misleading influence of the Vulgate’s mistranslation of 10! 
(‘‘ hic autem unam pro peccatis offerens hostiam in sempiternum sedit ”’?) upon 
the notion that Christ pleads his passion in heaven. 


1In Clem. Rom. 36° ® they are of gaidot kal dvritagoduevan TY OeAjuaTi 
avrov. 


X. 15-19. ] THE FINAL APPEAL I4I 


After reiterating the single sacrifice in v.14 (where tos dytafo- 
pévous is “the sanctified,” precisely as in 21), he adds (v.!5) an 
additional proof from scripture. Maptupet 8€ jptvy kal Td mvedpa 
76 dytov, a biblical proof as usual clinching the argument. ‘Hyiv 
is “you and me,” “us Christians,” not the literary plural, as if 
he meant “what I say is attested or confirmed by the inspired 
book.” Maptupety is a common Philonic term in this connexion, 
e.g. Leg. Alleg. iil. 2, waptupet dé Kai év érépous A€ywv xrA. (intro- 
ducing Dt 4°9 and Ex 17); similarly in Xen. Alem. i. 2. 20, 
paptupet b€ Kal Tav Tontdv 6 Agywv. The quotation, which is 
obviously from memory, is part of the oracle already quoted 
upon the new dabyxn (8°12); the salient sentence is the closing 
promise of pardon in v.!’, but he leads up to it by citing some 
of the introductory lines. The opening, peta yap 1d eipyxévar, 
implies that some verb follows or was meant to follow, but the 
only one in the extant text is Néyeu kuptos (v.16). Hence, before 
v.17 we must understand something like paprupet or Aé€yet or 
mpooebnkev kat pnow (Oecumenius) or tére eipnxev, although the 
evidence for any such phrase, eg. for dorepov A€yer (31. 37. 55. 
67. 71. 73. 80. 161) is highly precarious. In v.17 pyyoOjcopar 
has been corrected into pvnoc Oo by &° D° K LP, etc., since prno0d 
was the LXX reading and also better grammar, the future after 
od py being rare (cp. Diat. 2255, and above on 8!!). The oracle, 
even in the LXX version, contemplates no sacrifice whatever 
as a condition of pardon; but our author (see above, p. 131) 
assumes that such an absolute forgiveness was conditioned by 
some sacrifice.’ 


The writer now (10!%-1279) proceeds to apply his arguments 
practically to the situation of his readers, urging their privileges 
and their responsibilities under the new order of religion which 
he has just outlined. In 10!%31, which is the first paragraph, 
encouragement (vv.!%25) passes into warning (761), 


19 Brothers (adedpol, not since 3) !*), szzce we have confidence to enter the 
holy Presence in virtue of the blood of Jesus, * by the fresh, living way which 
he has inaugurated for us through the veil (that ts, through his flesh), *\ and 
since we have ‘‘a great Priest over the house of God,” * let us draw near with 
a true heart, in absolute assurance of faith, our hearts sprinkled clean from 
a bad conscience, and our bodies washed in pure water; * let us hold the hope 
we avow without wavering ( for we can rely on him who gave us the Promzse) ; 
°4 and let us consider how to stir one another up to love and good deeds—* not 
ceasing to meet together, as ts the habit of some, but admonishing one another 
(sc. éavrovs, as 3)%), al/ the more so, as you see the Day coming near. 


The writer (€xovtes ov) presses the weighty arguments of 
620_r0l8 but he returns with them to reinforce the appeal of 
31-416 ; after 10!%21 the conception of Jesus as the tepevs falls 
more into the background. The passage is one long sentence, 


142 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS (X. 19, 20. 


EXOVTES LA Tpogepxwipeba ... KaTéxopmev .. . Kal KaTAvodpey 

"Exovtes otv (as in 4!4) since the way is now open (9°) 
through the sacrifice of Jesus, whose atoning blood 1 is for us the 
means of entering God’s presence; mappynoiav, “a fre sure 
intraunce” (Coverdale), echoing 4" But the writer fills out 
the appeal of 41416 with the idea of the sanctuary and the 
sacrifice which he had broken off, in 5’*, to develop. Though 
the appeal still is Tpocepxspeba (23 = 438), the special motives are 
twofold : (a) wappyoia for access in virtue of the sacrifice of Jesus 
(vv.19 20), and (4) the possession of Jesus as the supreme tepeds 
(v.21), (a) The religious sense of mappyaia emerges in the early 
gloss inserted after Sir 187°: 


/ , > , 4 
Kpeltoowv mappnoia ev Seordtn pove 
Kpeloowv rappnota &v dernéty pévy 
 vexpa Kapdta vexpov avréxer Oat. 


Here zappynoia means confident trust, the unhesitating adherence 
of a human soul to God as its only Master, but our author 
specially defines it as wappyota eis (cp. 2 P 111 4 eicodos eis rh 
aimviov Bactireiav) eicodov (with gen. as 6ddv in g§, but not a 
synonym for 6éor), z.e. for access to (trav dyiwv) the holy Presence,. 
év TO alate ‘Inood (qualifying etcodov).! This resumes the 
thought of 97426 1019-12 (éy aiware as in 9*5), Compare for the 
phrase and general idea the words on the self-sacrifice of Decius 
Mus in Florus, 1. 15. 3: “‘quasi monitu deorum, capite uelato, 
primam ante aciem dis manibus se devoverit, ut in confertissima 
se hostium tela iaculatus nouum ad uictoriam iter sanguinis sui 
semita aperiret.” This eicodos trav ayiwy év TO aipare Incod is 
further described in v.29; we enter by (7v, with “8Sov.. . . Cdcav 
in apposition) a way which Jesus has inaugurated by his sacrifice 
(gi8: 24. 25), ‘This way is called recent or fresh and also living. 
In mpéopartos, as in the case of other compounds (e.g. KeAauvedys), 
the literal sense of the second element had been long forgotten. 
(cp. Holden’s note on Plutarch’s Zhemistocles, 24); mpodadaros 
simply means “fresh,” without any sacrificial allusion (‘ freshly- 
killed”). Galen (de fipp. et Plat, plac. iv. 7) quotes the well- 
known saying that Avrn éori dd€a zpdcdharos xaxod mrapovoias, 
and the word (z.e. 76 dpriws yevopevov, véov, veapdv, Hesychius), as 
is plain from other passages like Arist. Magna Moralia, 12036 
(6 ék THs mporparou pavracias axpatys xTA.), and Eccles 19 (ovx« 
éorw Tav mpdcharov vo tov HALov), had no longer any of the 
specific sacrificial sense suggested etymologically by its second 
part. It is the thought of éy@és in 13%, though the writer means 


1 Hence the idea is not put in quite the same way as in Eph 3 2 (év @ 
Exouev Thy mappyolay kal rhy mpocaywyhv). In Sir 25% unde Pia5) yuvouxl 
movnpe eovolay, & A read mappyolay for B’s éEovgiay, which proves how deeply 
the idea of liberty was rooted in wappyela, 


X. 20-24. ] THE VEIL 143 


particularly (as in 14? 9§") to suggest that a long period had 
elapsed before the perfect fellowship was inaugurated finally ; it 
is mpoodaros, not dpxatos. Zaocav means, in the light of 775 (cp. 
Jn 14°), that access to God is mediated by the living Christ in 
virtue of his sacrificial intercession ; the contrast is not so much 
with what is transient, as though C@cav were equivalent to péevovcay 
(Chrysostom, Cosm. 415a), as with the dead victims of the 
OT cultus or ‘the lifeless pavement trodden by the highpriest” 
(Delitzsch). He entered God’s presence thus 814 tod katarre- 
tdopatos (619 9%), todr eat tod capkés attod—a ritual expression 
for the idea of 6% Ad is local, and, whether a verb like 
eioeh Ov is supplied or not, 8:4 7. x. goes with évexatvoev, the idea 
being that Jesus had to die, in order to bring us into a living 
fellowship with God; the shedding of his blood meant that he 
had a body (105!) to offer in sacrifice (cp. g!4). The writer, 
however, elaborates his argument with a fresh detail of 
symbolism, suggested by the ritual of the tabernacle which he 
has already described in 9%. There, the very existence of a veil 
hanging between the outer and the inner sanctuary was interpreted 
as a proof that access to God’s presence was as yet imperfectly 
realized. The highpriest carried once a year inside the veil the 
blood of victims slain outside it; that was all. Jesus, on the 
other hand, sheds his own blood as a perfect sacrifice, and thus 
wins entrance for us into the presence of God. Only, instead of 
saying that his sacrificial death meant the rending of the veil 
(like the author of Mk 15%5), ze. the supersession of the OT 
barriers between God and man, he allegorizes the veil here as 
the flesh of Christ ;. this had to be rent before the blood could 
be shed, which enabled him to enter and open God’s presence 
for the people. It is a daring, poetical touch, and the parallelism 
is not to be prosaically pressed into any suggestion that the 
human nature in Jesus hid God from men éyv tats tpépats tis 
gapkés attod, or that he ceased to be truly human when he 
sacrificed himself. 

The idea already suggested in facav is now (4) developed 
(in v.24) by (€xovtes) kai tepéa péyav emt tov otkov Tod beod, another 
echo of the earlier passage (cp. 31° 414), tepeds péyas being a 
sonorous LXX equivalent for dpxvepeds. Then comes the triple 
appeal, mpocepympeba . . . KaTéxwpev .. . Kal KaTavod@pev . . 
The metaphor of mpovepxspeda kth. (v.*), breaks down upon the 
fact that the Israelites never entered the innermost shrine, except 
as represented by their highpriest who entered once a year év 
aipate dddotpiw (9” 25), which he took with him in order to atone 
for the sins that interrupted the communion of God and the 
people. In Mpds “EBpatous the point is that, in virtue of the 
blood of Christ, Christians enjoy continuous fellowship with 


144 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS [X.. 24-29, 


God; the sacrifice of Christ enables them to approach God’s 
presence, since their sins have been once and for all removed. 
The entrance of the OT highpriest therefore corresponds both 
to the sacrifice of Christ and to that access of Christians which 
the blood of Christ secures. On the one hand, Christ is our high- 
priest (v.21); through his self-sacrifice in death the presence of 
God has been thrown open to us (vv. 2°), This is the primary 
thought. But in order to express our use of this privilege, the 
writer has also to fall back upon language which suggests the 
entrance of the OT highpriest (cp. v.!® év 16 atari “Inood with 
9%). He does not mean that Christians are priests, with the 
right of entry in virtue of a sacrifice which they present, but, 
as to approach God was a priestly prerogative under the older 
order, he describes the Christian access to God in sacerdotal 
metaphors. Mpocepywpe8a is one of these. It is amplified first 
by a petd clause, and then by two participial clauses. The 
approach to God must be whole-hearted, peta ddnOuvfs xapdias,! 
without any hesitation or doubt, év wAnpodopia (61!) miotews.? 
This thought of wiorts as man’s genuine answer to the realities 
of divine revelation, is presently to be developed at length 
(10%8f), Meantime the writer throws in the double participial 
clause, pepavtiopevor . . . kalapg. The metaphors are sacer- 
dotal ; as priests were sprinkled with blood and bathed in water, 
to qualify them for their sacred service, so Christians may 
approach God with all confidence, on the basis of Christ’s 
sacrifice, since they have been fepavtiopevor (7.¢e. sprinkled and 
so purified from—a frequent use of the verb) dmé cuverdjoews 
movnpas (= avveidyoews duaptiav, 10%) in their hearts (tds KapdSias 
—no external cleansing). Then the writer adds, kat NeAoucpévor 
To odpa Batt kabapo, suggesting that baptism corresponded to 
the bathing of priests (e.g. in Lev 164). Once and for all, at 
baptism (cp. 1 P 37), Christians have been thus purified from 
guilty stains by the efficacy of Christ’s sacrifice. What room 
then can there be in their minds for anything but faith, a confident 
faith that draws near to God, sure that there is no longer 
anything between Him and them? 

The distinctive feature which marked off the Christian 
Bantiopds from all similar ablutions (6? 9!) was that it meant 
something more than a cleansing of the body; it was part and 
parcel of an inward cleansing of the xapda, effected by 16 atya 

1 The phrase év addnOuwy Kapdig occurs in Zest. Dan 5° (v./. xaOap@) and in 
Is 38° (év. x. d.). 

2 There is a verbal parallel in the account of Isis-worship given by 
Apuleius (Metamorph. xi. 28: ‘‘ ergo igitur cunctis adfatim praeparatis . . . 
principalis dei nocturnis orgiis inlustratus, plena tam fiducta germanae 


rehgionis obsequium diuinum frequentabam ”). 
More specifically, by the afua pavriopod of 12%. 


X. 23.] PURITY 145 


THs SuaOyKys (v.29).1 Hence this as the vital element is put first, 
though the body had also its place and part in the cleansing ex- 
perience. The xapdéa and the c@ya are a full, plastic expression 
for the entire personality, as an ancient conceived it. Ancient 
religious literature ? is full of orders for the penitent to approach 
the gods only after moral contrition and bodily cleansing, with a 
clean heart and a clean body, in clean clothes even. But, apart 
from other things, such ablutions had to be repeated, while the 
Christian Bawtiopds was a single ceremony, lying at the source and 
start of the religious experience. And what our author is think- 
ing of particularly is not this or that pagan rite, but the OT 
ritual for priests as described in Ex 297%, Ly 825 145 etc. (cp. 


Joma 3). 


Three specimens of the anxious care for bodily purity in ancient religious 
ritual may be given. First (i) the ritual directions for worship in Syd/. 567 
(ii A.D.) : mp@rov wev kal Td wéyorov, xEtpas Kal yvwunv Kabapods Kal wy.ets 
bmdpxovras Kal undév avrots decvdv suverddras. Second (ii) the stress laid on 
it by a writer like Philo, who (guod deus sit tmmutadzlis, 2), after pleading 
that we should honour God by purifying ourselves from evil deeds and 
washing off the stains of life, adds: kal yap etnOes els uev Ta lepd wh éfetvar 
Badifew, ds dv uh mpdrepov Novoduevos HPatdpiyyntrar Td cua, evxerOo dé Kal 
Ovew émcxerpety Ere knrdwpuevyn kal wedupyévy diavolg. His argument is that 
if the body requires ablutions (mepippavrnplos Kat Ka@apolois ayvevriKois) 
before touching an external shrine, how can anyone who is morally impure 
draw near (rpooedBety To Oe) the most pure God, unless he means to 
repent? ‘O mév yap mpos Te pndev emetepyacas bat kaxdv kal Ta Tadaa éxvipac- 
Oat Sixardoas yeynOws mpootres [cp. He 10% 72], 6 5’ dvev rovrwy SuoKdBapros . 
ov apiurtdcbw* AjoeTat yap ovdérore Tov Ta ev pvXols THs Stavolas dpwvra [cp. 
He 433] kat rots ddvros avrijs éurepirarodvra, Or again in de Plant. 39: 
cwpara Kal Puxas kabnpdpevor, TH “ev NovTpols, TA dé vouwv Kal madelas dpO7js 
pevuact. In de Cherub. 28 he denounces the ostentatious religion of the 
worldly, who in addition to their other faults, ra wév cdyara dovtpots Kal 
Kabapolos aroppimrovrat, Ta Oe Wuyis éxviyacbar raOn, ols KarappuTalverar 6 
Bios, obre Bovdovrat odre émirndevovcr, are very particular about their outward 
religious practices 3 but careless about a clean soul. Finally, (iii) there is the 
saying of Epictetus (iv. 10, 3): émel yap éxetvor (z.e. the gods) pice KaBapol 
kal KI PAT ot, ép door ny yikaoww avrots ol dv@pwro. Kata Tov Ndyor, émrl TocovTOY 
Kal ToU Kabapod Kal Tod Kabaplov eiclv avOexrixkol. 

For the exceptional pepavriopuévor (8* A C D*), 8° D° etc. have substituted 
éppavricpévoe (so Theodoret). The AedXovcuévae of 8 B D P is the more 
common xow7 form of the Attic AeNoupévar (A C D° etc.). 


The next appeal (v.?%), karéxwpev tiv dpodoylay Tis éAmidSos 
(to which &* vg pesh eth add the gloss of 7yuév), echoes 414 


11S afua ths SuabjKns ev @ ipyidoOn, as 1 Co 61! adAd amedovoacbe, ddA 
nya Onre. 

2 Cp. Engen Fehrle’s Die Kultische Keuschhett tm Altertum (1910), pp. 
26 f., isa Sir J. G. Frazer’s Adonis, Attis, Osiris (1907), pp. 407 f. 

$ According to a recently discovered (first century) inscription on a 
Palestinian synagogue (cp. Revue Liblique, 1921, pp. 247 f.), the synagogue 
was furnished with rév evGva (for hospitality, cp. below, 13°) kal ra xpnorH- 
oa TH LOdTwr (baths for ritual ablutions). 


10 


146 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS [X. 28, 24. 


(kpatOpev THS Sporoyias) and 3° (éav tHv wappyciav Kal TO 
Kadynpa tHS eAmidos . . . Katdoxwpev). ‘This hope for the future 
was first confessed at baptism, and rests upon God’s promise! 
(as already explained in 61718), It is to be held d&kAus, a term 
applied by Philo to the word of a good man (6 yap tod oovdaiov, 
gyal, Adyos Spkos Eotw, BEBaros, dxrwys, devdeararos, épnpEeropevos 
GAnOeia, de Spec. Leg. ii. 1); in Irenaeus it recurs in a similar 
connexion (i. 88, ed. Harvey: 6 tov Kxavdéva ris ddnGeias axdui 
év éautd Katéxwv, dv ia Tov Barricparos elAndpe) The old 
Wycliffite version translates finely: ‘‘ hold we the confessioun of 
oure hope bowynge to no side.” The close connexion between 
pepavtiopévor KTA. and deovopévor «7A. makes it inadvisable to 
begin the second appeal with kat Nehoucpévor 75 oOpa date Kabapd 
(Erasmus, Beza, Bengel, Lachmann, Lunemann, von Soden, B. 
Weiss, etc.) A more plausible suggestion, first offered by 
Theodoret and adopted recently by Hofmann and Seeberg, is to 
begin the second appeal after wiotews, making xatexOpev carry 
pepaytiopevor . . . Kabapd. This yields a good sense, for it 
brings together the allusions to the baptismal confession. But 
the ordinary view is more probable; the asyndeton in xareyopev 
is impressive, and if it is objected that the xarexauev clause is 
left with less content than the other two, the answer is that its 
eschatological outlook is reiterated in the third clause, and that 
by itself its brevity has a telling force. Besides, éyovtes «th. 
(19-21) introduce katex@pev as well as mpocepy wea. 


The third appeal (#* 25) turns on love (cp. 61°), as the first on 
faith, and the second on hope. The members of the circle or 
community are to stir up one another to the practice of Chris- 
tian love. Since this is only possible when common worship 
and fellowship are maintained, the writer warns them against 
following the bad example of abandoning such gatherings; kat 
katavodmev &dAyAous, for, if we are to Karavoeiy Christ (31), we 
are also bound to keep an eye on one another eis mapoguopév 
dyats Kal kah@v epywy (7.e. an active, attractive moral life, 
inspired by Christian love). This good sense of mapofuopds as 
stimulus seems to be an original touch; in Greek elsewhere it 
bears the bad sense of provocation or exasperation (cp. Ac 15%), 
although the verb zapogdvvew had already acquired a good sense 
(eg. in Josephus, Anz. xvi. 125, mapogdvac tiv edvorav: in Pr 68 
to Gt un exAvopevos, tapoéuve dé kal Tov Pidov gov dv éveyujow: and 
in Xen. Cyrop. vi. 2. 5, kat tovrovs éraivav te mapwévve). Pliny’s 
words at the close of his letter to Caninius Rufus (iii. 7) illus- 
trate what is meant by zapogvouds in this sense: ‘Scio te 
stimulis non egere; me tamen tui caritas evocat ut currentem 

1 An instance of this is quoted in 114, 


X. 24. | CHURCH FELLOWSHIP 147 


quoque instigem, sicut tu soles me. “Aya6j) & épis, cum invicem 
se mutuis exhortationibus amici ad amorem immortalitatis 
exacuunt.” How the wapogvopds is to be carried out, the writer 
does not say. By setting a good example? By definite exhorta- 
tions (mapaxadodvres, v.2°, like 131)? Mi éyxatahelmovres—do not 
do to one another what God never does to you (13°), do not 
leave your fellow-members in the lurch (the force of éyxaraAcirewv, 
especially in the xowy)—thv émouvaywyhy éautdv (reflexive pro- 
noun in the genitive = 7pGv). “Emouvaywyy in the kow7 (cp. Deiss- 
mann’s Light from the East, 102 f.) means a collection (of money), 
but had already in Jewish Greek (e.g. 2 Mac 27 éws av ovvadyy 6 
eds éricvvaywynv Tov Aaov) begun to acquire the present sense 
of a popular “ gathering.” KaOus €Bos (sc. €or) tuviv. But who 
are these? What does this abandonment of common fellowship 
mean? (a) Perhaps that some were growing ashamed of their 
faith ; it was so insignificant and unpopular, even dangerous to 
anyone who identified himself with it openly. They may have 
begun to grow tired of the sacrifices and hardships involved in 
membership of the local church. This is certainly the thought 
of 10°! and it is better than to suppose (4) the leaders were a small 
group of teachers or more intelligent Christians, who felt able, in 
a false superiority, to do without common worship; they did not 
require to mix with the ordinary members! The author in any 
case is warning people against the dangers of individualism, a 
warning on the lines of the best Greek and Jewish ethics, e.g. 
Isokrates, ad Demon. 13, Tia 7d Satpoviov det pev, padtora Sé peta 
THs @oAews, and the rabbinic counsel in Taanith, 11. 1 (“ whenever 
the Israelites suffer distress, and one of them withdraws from the 
rest, two angels come to him and, laying their hands upon his 
head, say, this man who separates himself from the assembly 
shall not see the consolation which is to visit the congregation”), 
or in Hillel’s saying (Pirke Aboth 2°): “Separate not thyself 
from the congregation, and trust not in thyself until the day of 
thy death.” The loyal Jews are described in Ps.-Sol 1738 as 
ol ayarévres cvvaywyas doiwy, and a similar thought occurs also 
(if “his” and not “my” is the correct reading) in Od. Sol 3?: 
‘‘ His members are with Him, and on them do I hang.” Any 
early Christian who attempted to live like a pious particle without 
the support of the community ran serious risks in an age when 
there was no public opinion to support him. His isolation, what- 
ever its motive—fear, fastidiousness, self-conceit, or anything else 
—exposed him to the danger of losing his faith altogether. These 
are possible explanations of the writer’s grave tone in the pas- 
sage before us. Some critics, like Zahn (§ 46), even think that 
(c) such unsatisfactory Christians left their own little congrega- 
tion for another, in a spirit of lawless pique, or to gratify their 


148 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS  [X. 25, 26. 


own tastes selfishly ; but éauréy is not emphatic, and in any 
congregation of Christians the duties of love would be pressed, 
Separatist tendencies were not absent from the early church; 
thus some members considered themselves too good to require 
common worship, as several warnings prove, eg. in Barn 41 
pn kal’ Eavtods évduvovres povalere Os dn Sedikatwpevor, GAN eri 
TO avTO cuvepyopevoe ouvlyTelre Epi TOU Ko] TvudéepovTos) and 
Ign. Eph. 5° (6 otv py épxopmevos eri 7d aitd otros nbn brepnpavet 
kal €avrov dvéxpivev). But in our epistle (d) the warning is directed 
specially against people who combined Christianity with a 
number of mystery-cults, patronizing them in turn, or who with- 
drew from Christian fellowship, feeling that they had exhausted 
the Christian faith and that it required to be supplemented by 
some other cult. ‘At first and indeed always there were 
naturally some people who imagined that one could secure the 
sacred contents and blessings of Christianity as one did those of 
Isis or the Magna Mater, and then withdraw” (Harnack, 
Expansion of Christianity, bk. ili. c. 43; cp. Reitzenstein’s Hellen. 
Mysterienreligionen, 94). This was serious, for, as the writer 
realized, it implied that they did not regard Christianity as the | 
final and full revelation ; their action proved that the Christian 
faith ranked no higher with them than one of the numerous 
Oriental cults which one by one might interest the mind, but 
which were not necessarily in any case the last word on life. 
The argument of the epistle has been directed against this mis- 
conception of Christianity, and the writer here notes a practical 
illustration of it in the conduct of adherents who were hold- 
ing aloof, or who were in danger of holding aloof, from the 
common worship. Hence the austere warning which follows. 
Such a practice, or indeed any failure to “draw near” by 
the way of Jesus, is an insult to God, which spells hopeless 
ruin for the offender. And evidently this retribution is near. 
Christians are to be specially on their guard against conduct 
that means apostasy, for Bdéwere (how, he does not say) 
éyyiLoucay (as in Ro 131") thy fpéepay (here, as in 1 Co 338, 
without éxeivy or tod xvpiov). This eschatological setting 
distinguishes the next warning (vv.?8!) from the earlier 
injow 


6 For tf we sin deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the Truth, 
there ts no longer any sacrifice for sins left, * nothing but an awful outlook of 
doom, that ‘‘burning Wrath” which will “consume the foes’ (see v.18) of 
God. * Anyone who has rejected the law of Moses ‘‘ dies” without mercy, 
“* on the evidence of two or of three witnesses.” ™ How much heavier, do you 
suppose, will be the punishment assigned (t.e. by God) to him who has spurned 
the Son of God, who has profaned ‘‘ the covenant-blood” (9) with which he 
was sanctified (10), who has insulted the Spirit of grace? ® We know who 
sata, ‘* Vengeance ts mine, I will exact a requital”: and again (wdduw, as in 


X. 26.| APOSTASY 149 


218), ‘* The Lord will pass sentence on his people.” * Tt tis an awful thing to 
Jall into the hands of the living God. 


Apostasy like withdrawal from the church on the ground 
already mentioned, is treated as one of the deliberate (€xousiws) 
sins which (cp. on 57), under the OT order of religion, were 
beyond any atonement. Wilful offences, like rebellion and 
blasphemy against God, were reckoned unpardonable. ‘In the 
case of one who, by his sin, intentionally disowns the covenant 
itself, there can be no question of sacrifice. He has himself cut 
away the ground on which it would have been possible for him 
to obtain reconciliation” (Schultz, OZ Theology, ii. 88). There 
is an equivalent to this, under the new 8:a04Kn, our author 
declares. To abandon Christianity is to avow that it is in- 
adequate, and this denial of God’s perfect revelation in Jesus 
Christ is fatal to the apostate. In éxouciws dpaptévtav par (7), 
Exovoiws is put first for the sake of emphasis, and dyaprovrwv 
means the sin of droorjva: ard Geod Ldvtos (31") or of zapa- 
mimrew (6°), the present tense implying that such people persist 
in this attitude. “Exouoiws is the keynote to the warning. Its 
force may be felt in a passage like Thuc. iv. 98, where the 
Athenians remind the Boeotians that God pardons what is done 
under the stress of war and peril, cal yap tév dxovolwy dpaptn- 
parwv Katadvyyv elvat tovs Bwovs, and that it is wanton and 
presumptuous crimes alone which are heinous. Philo (w7¢. Mos. 
i. 49) describes Balaam praying for forgiveness from God on 
the ground that he had sinned im’ dyvoias aAX’ od Kal? Exovorov 
yveipnv. The adverb occurs in 2 Mac 143 (‘AAkimos . . . Exovoiws 
d€ pepoAvopevos). The general idea of the entire warning is that 
the moral order punishes all who wantonly and _ wilfully flout it ; 
as Menander once put it (Kock’s Com. Attic. Hragm. 700): 


, ‘ 3 / > xv , 
vomos puraxGeis oddev eoriv 7 vopos* 
ce x \ \ , ‘\ / 

6 py prdraxGels Kal vouos Kat dyptos. 


Our author expresses this law of retribution in personal terms 
drawn from the OT, which prove how deeply moral and reverent 
his religious faith was, and how he dreaded anything like pre- 
suming upon God’s kindness and mercy. The easy-going man 
thinks God easy going; he is not very serious about his religious 
duties, and he cannot imagine how God can take them very seriously 
either. ‘ We know” better, says the author of [pds “E@paiovs! 
Christianity is described (in v.*°) as ro AaBety THY éeriyvwow 
ts aAnGeias, a semi-technical phrase of the day, which recurs in 
the Pastoral Epistles (though with éA6ety eis instead of AaBetiv). It 
is not one of our author’s favourite expressions,! but the phrase 


+ Here it is an equivalent for the phrases used in 6*°; there is no dis- 
tinction between émlyvwors and yvwors (Peo0) any more than in the LXX, and 


150 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS [X. 26-29. 


is partly used by Epictetus in its most general sense (AaBwv tis 
Tapa THS PioEews péTPA Kal Kavovas eis éexiyvwow THS GAnOeias KTA., 
ii. 20. 21), when upbraiding the wretched academic philosophers 
(of dradaimwpor Axadnuaixol) for discrediting the senses as organs 
of knowledge, instead of using and improving them. All that 
renegades can expect (v.27) is goBepd tus (= quidam, deepening 
the idea with its touch of vagueness) ékdoxy (a sense coined by 
the writer for this term, after his use of éxdéxeoOar in 1018) kpioews, 
for they have thrown over the only sacrifice that saves men from 
xptots (927). This is expanded in a loose? reminiscence of Is 
261! (Zyros Anpierar adv awaidevtov, Kal viv wUp Tods trevavTious 
éderat), though the phrase aupds fAdos recalls Zeph 119 (38) ev 
mupt Cnrov adrov karavadAwiyoerat Taca 7 yn. The contemporary 
Jewish Apocalypse of Baruch (48° 4°) contains a similar threat 
to wilful sinners : 


“Therefore shall a fire consume their thoughts, 
and in flame shall the meditations of their reins be tried; 
for the Judge shall come and will not tarry— | 
because each of earth’s inhabitant knew when he was trans- 
gressing.” 


The penalty for the wilful rejection (4@etjaas) of the Mosaic 
law ? was severe (Dt 17717), but not more severe than the penalty. 
to be inflicted on renegades from Christianity (vv.?83!), The 
former penalty was merciless, xwpis oixtippav (to which, at an 
early period, xai daxpvwy was added by D, most old Latin texts, 
and syr™). It is described in a reminiscence of Dt 17° éxt duciv 
paptuow 7 éri tpioly paptvow aroGavetrar 6 adrobvycKwy (i.e. the 
apostate who has yielded to idolatry). The witnesses executed 
the punishment for the sin of which they had given evidence 
(Dt 177, Ac 757f, Jn 87, Sanhedrim 64), but this is not before the 
writer’s mind; émi with the dative simply means “on the ground 
of (the evidence given by).” In méow Soxette rd. (v.29), doxetre 
is intercalated as in Aristoph. Acharn. 12 (ras totr éeverr€é pov 
Soxeis tHv Kapdiav ;), and Herm.: Szm. ix. 28. 8 (ei ra €Ovy Tovs 
SovAous aitav KoArAdlovow, éedv tis dpvnonta Tov KUpLov éavToOd, TL 
Soxeire moujoet 6 KUpios tyuiv;). TIldow (cp. g!*) introduces an 


ad7Gea had been already stamped by Philo (e.g. de Justctia, 6, where the 
proselyte is said weravacrds els dd\7jOecav) as a term for the true religion, 
which moulds the life of those who become members of the People. Compare 
the study of the phrase by M. Dibelius in W7 Studien fiir G. Heinrici (1914), 
. 176-189. 
Pe Probably it was the awkwardness of {7\os, coming after rupdés, which led 
to its omission in W. Sah reads simply ‘‘ the flame of the fire.” 
2 According to the later rabbinic theory of inspiration, even to assert that 
Moses uttered one word of the Torah on his own authority was to despise tite 
Torah (Sifre 112, on Nu 15%), " 


X. 29, 30.] RENEGADES I51 


argument from the less to the greater, which was the first of 
Hillel’s seven rules for exegesis, and which is similarly used by 
Philo in de Fuga, 16, where, after quoting Ex 2115, he adds that 
Moses here practically denies that there is any pardon for those 
who blaspheme God (ei yap oi tots Ovntods KaxnyopyoavTes yovets 
ardyovta tiv emi Gavdtw, Tivos agiovs xpi) vopile Timwpias Tors 
Tov dAwY maTépa Kai mointnv BAaodynpety tropevovtas ;). There 
is also a passage in de Spec. Legibus (ii. 254, 255) where Philo 
asks, “If a man pi rpoonkdvtws duvds is guilty, méons agvos 
Tinwpias 6 Tov GvTws dvTa Hedy dpvodpmevos ;” 

Tiu.wpla originally meant vengeance. Aradéper dé riwwpla kal xddacws* 7 
bev yap Kédaots TOO mdcxovTos Evexa eoTrw, 7 5€ Tiuwpla Tod wotodvros, wa 
dmomA\npw0y (Arist. Rhetorzc, i. 10. 11; see Cope’s Lutroduction, p. 232). 


But it became broadened into the general sense of punishment, and this 
obtained in Hellenistic Greek. 


The threefold description of what is involved in the sin of 
apostasy begins: 6 tov vidv tod Oeod Katamatioas, another ex- 
pression for the thought of 6°, which recalls Zec 123 (AéOov 
KaTamaTovpevov Tac Tos COverw' Tas 6 KaTaTaTOv aditny éurailwv 
éumaigerar). Karamaretvy opxia was the phrase for breaking oaths 
(Ziad, 41°"); with a personal object, the verb denotes con- 
tempt of the most flagrant kind. Another aspect of the sin is 
that a man has thereby xouvdv ! Fyynodpevos the sacrifice of Jesus ; 
his action means that it is no more to him than an ordinary death 
(‘“‘communem,” 2), instead of a divine sacrifice which makes him 
a partaker of the divine fellowship (see p. 145). Where Christ is 
rejected, he is first despised; outward abandonment of him 
springs from some inward depreciation or disparagement. The 
third aspect, xai 75 mveipa tis xdpttos (not tov vouov Mavoéws) 
evuBpioas, suggests that the writer had in mind the language of 
Zec 1210 (éxyed . . . mvedua yxapiTos Kal oiktipyod), but mvedpa 
xdpitos (contrasted here, as in Jn 117, with the vouos Mwveéws) 
is a periphrasis for rvedua aytov (64), xdpis being chosen (416 12!) 
to bring out the personal, gracious nature of the power so wan- 
tonly insulted.? *EvuBpifew is not a LXX term, and it generally 
takes the dative. (Ev © hyrdoby after ynodpevos is omitted by 
A and some MSS of Chrysostom.) 

The sombre close (vv.* 8!) of the warning is a reminder 
that the living God punishes renegades. oBepév (v.3!) re-echoes 
the doBepa of v.27, and the awful nature of the doom is brought 
out by two quotations adapted from the OT. “Epot ékdixnors, 


1 Once in the LXX (Pr 157%) in this sense, 

2In Zest. Jud, 187 the rvetua ydprros poured out upon men is the Spirit 
as a gracious gift of God. But in He 10”, as in Eph 4®, it is the divine Spirit 
wounded or outraged, the active retribution, however, being ascribed not ta 
the Spirit itself but to God. 


152 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS [X. 80, 81 


éya dvtamodécw, is the same form of Dt 32% as is quoted in Ro 
1219; it reproduces the Hebrew original more closely than the 
LXX (ev tuepa exdicjoews avtarodwow), perhaps from some 
current Greek version, unless the author of Hebrews borrowed 
it from Paul.t Some of the same authorities as in 81? indeed 
add, from Ro 12!%, Néyer kdpios (8° A D° K L arm Theodoret, 
Damasus, etc.). Kpwvet Kiptos tov AXadv abroad is from Dt 32°6. The 
thought of the original, in both passages, is God avenging his 
people on their foes and championing them, not punishing them ; 
but here this fate is assigned to all who put themselves outside 
the range of God’s mercy in the sacrifice of Jesus Christ ; they fall 
under God’s retribution. T6 épmecetv eis xetpas Qeod is a phrase 
used in a very different sense in 2 S 24*, Sir 218; here it means, 
to fall into the grasp of the God who punishes the disloyal ? 
or rebels against his authority. Thus the tyrant Antiochus is 
threatened, in 2 Mac 731, od pi dtadiyns Tas xetpas Tod Peod. As 
in 312, Lavros is added to @eod to suggest that he is quick and 
alive to inflict retribution. ‘The writer is impressively reticent 
on the nature of God’s tyswpia, even more reticent than Plato, in 
one of the gravest warnings in Greek literature, the famous 
passage in the Leges (904, 905) about the divine dixn: Tavrys 
THs OiKyS OUTE TU pay mote ovte ef aAXOS atvy7s yevomevos emevenrar 
mepuyever Bau ded" nv macy Sucdy dtahepovTws eragav TE ob rdfavres 
Xpeav TE ecevra Beir ar 70 Tapamrav. ov yep. dmednOynon wore tr 
abrhs® ovxX ovrw opuKpos ov dvon Kare TO THS YS. Babos, otd" tdnrds 
yevomevos eis TOV otpavov avarrTnoy, Telos O€ adTOY THY TpOTHKOVT AY 
Tyuswplay eit evOdde pevwy eite Kat év Aldov duaropevbeis. Plato 
altered the Homeric term dixy Geav to suit his purpose; what 
meant “ way ” or “habit,” he turned into a weighty word for 
“justice.” The alteration is justified from his “ preaching # 
point of view, and the solemn note of the Greek sage’s warning 
is that of He 1076 ; you cannot play fast and loose with God. 

Yet, as at 6°, so here: the writer swiftly turns from warning to 
encouragement, appealing to his readers to do better than he 
feared, and appealing to all that was best in them. ‘ Why 
throw away the gains of your fine record in the past? You have 
not long to wait for your reward. Hold on for a little longer.” 
This is the theme of vy.82-39 ; 


’ Paul cites the saying to prove that private Christians need not and must 
not take revenge into their own hands, since God is sure to avenge his people 
on their adversaries. Which is close to the idea of the original. Our author 
uses the text to clinch a warning that God will punish («pive?= ‘ punibit,” not 

‘*judicabit”’) his people for defying and deserting him. 

2 So the martyr Eleazar protests in 2 Mac 6°, as he refuses to save his 
life by unworthy compromise: el yap kal émt rod wapévros éfehoduae ry é& 
avOpwruv Tinwplav, ddAd Tas TOO mavToKpdTopos XeEtpas ore fdv otre drobavas 
ex pevgouat. 


X. 32, 33.] A FINE RECORD 153 


82 Recall the former days when, after you were enlightened (pwricbévtes, 
as 64), you endured a hard struggle of suffering, ® partly by being held ut 
yourselves to obloguy and anguish, partly by making common cause with those 
who fared in this way ; * for you did sympathize with the prisoners, and you 
took the confiscation of your own belongings cheerfully, conscious that elsewhere 
you had higher, you had lasting possessions. *© Now do not drop that con- 
fidence of yours ; tt (Hrs, as in 23) carries with tt a rich hope of reward. 
386 Steady patience 7s what you need, so that after doing the will of God you 
may (like Abraham, 6!°) get what you have been promised. * For ‘in a 
little, a very little” now, 


‘* The Coming One (9%) will arrive without delay. 
88 Meantime my just man shall live on by his faith ; 
af he shrinks back, my soul takes no delight in him.” 


39 We are not the men to shrink back and be lost, but to have faith and so to 
win our souls. 


The excellent record of these Christians in the past consisted 
in their common brotherliness (6!°), which is now viewed in the 
light of the hardships they had had to endure, soon after they 
became Christians. The storm burst on them early; they 
weathered it nobly; why give up the voyage, when it is nearly 
done? It is implied that any trouble at present is nothing to 
what they once passed through. “Avapipynoxeobe S€ tas mpdtepov 
Hpépas (v.°2): memory plays a large part in the religious experi- 
ence, and is often as here a stimulus. In these earlier days they 
had (vv.°? 83) two equally creditable experiences (todto pév . . . 
touto $é¢, a good classical idiom); they bore obloquy and hard- 
ship manfully themselves, and they also made common cause 
with their fellow-sufferers. By saying &Anow mabypdtwv, the 
writer means, that the rafyuara made the &@Anors which tested 
their powers (2!°). “A@Anovs—the metaphor is athletic, as in 12! 
—came to denote a martyr’s death in the early church; but no 
such red significance attaches to it here. Apparently the per- 
secution was not pushed to the last extreme (124); all survived 
it. Hence there can be no allusion to the “ludibria ” of Nero’s 
outburst against the Roman Christians, in (v.*%) Oeatpifdpevor, 
which is used in a purely figurative sense (so Géarpov in 1 Co 4°), 
like éxOearpiZew in Polybius (e.g. iil. gt. 10, dudrep EneAXov . . . 
exOeatprety 5é Tovs ToAeuiovs pvyouaxotvras). The meaning is 
that they had been held up to public derision, scoffed and 
sneered at, accused of crime and vice, unjustly suspected and 
denounced. All this had been, the writer knew, a real ordeal, 
particularly because the stinging contempt and insults had had 
to be borne in the open. “Orayv pév ydp tis dvedignrat Kal’ Eavtov, 
Aurnpov pev, TOAAG Se rA€ov, Stay ert ravtwy (Chrysostom). They 
had been exposed to dve8ropots te kat OAipeor, taunts and scorn 
that tempted one to feel shame (an experience which our author 
evidently felt keenly), as well as to wider hardships, both insults 
and injuries. All this they had stood manfully. Better still, 


154 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS [X. 83, 34. | 


their personal troubles had not rendered them indisposed to 
care for their fellow-sufferers, tév ottws (7.e. in the wafjpara) 
dvaotpedopevwy (1318), They exhibited the virtue of practical 
sympathy, urged in 13°, at any risk or cost to themselves (kotvwvot 
. . « yevnbevtes with the genitive, as in LXX of Pr 28%, Is 17%). 
The ideas of v.3° are now (v.*+) taken up in the reverse order 
(as in 517). Kal yap tots Seoplors cuvenayoate, imprisonment 
being for some a form of their ra@yuara.. Christians in prison 
had to be visited and fed by their fellow-members. For cupraety 
(cp. 44) as between man and man, see Zest. Sym. 3° kat ourov 
cuprabel Td POovovpevw: Test. Benj. 44 ro dobevotvri ovpracyxer : 
Ign. Rom. 64 cupraGeirw por: and the saying which is quoted 
in Meineke’s Frag. Comic. Graec. iv. 52, ék tov mabetv ylyvwoxe 
Kal TO ovprabeiv’ kal gol yap aAXAos ovptabycerat tafwv. They 
had also borne their own losses with more than equanimity,! 
with actual gladness (etd xapas, the same thought as in Ro 5°, 
though differently worked out), yuedoxovtes (with accus. and 
infinitive) €xew éautots (= duds, which is actually read here by 
Cosmas Indicopleustes, 348a@; éavrovs is not emphatic any more 
than éavrav in v.25) kpetocova (a favourite term of the author) 
Grapéuwv (Ac 2%) kat pevoucay (1314, the thought of Mt 67°). Thy 
dpray)y Tov bmapxévtav Sudv (cp. Polybius, iv. 17. 4, apmrayas 
brapxovTwv) implies that their own property had been either 
confiscated by the authorities or plundered in some mob-riot. 
Note the paronomasia of trapyévrwy and trapéw, and the place 
of this loss in the list of human evils as described in the Laches, 
195 E (eire tO Oavaros elite vooos cire aroBoAn xpynydtwv eorat). 


There is no question of retaliation; the primitive Christians whom the 
author has in view had no means of returning injuries for injuries, or even 
of claiming redress. Thus the problem raised and solved by contemporary 
moralists does not present itself to the writer; he does not argue, as, ¢.g., 
Maximus of Tyre did in the next century (D¢ssert. ii.), that the good man 
should treat the loss of property as a trifle, and despise the futile attempts of 
his enemies to injure him thus, the soul or real self being beyond the reach 
of such evil-doers. The tone is rather that of Tob 47! (un PoBod, wadlor, dre 
érrwxetoapev’ vmdpxet gol moka, Edy PoBnOns rdv Oéov xTX.), except that 
our author notes the glow (wera xapds) of an enthusiastic unworldliness, 
which was more than any Stoic resignation or even any quiet acquiescence 
in providence; he suggests in €avrovs that, while others might seize and hold 
their property, they themselves had a possession of which no one could rob 
them. Seneca (Z/. ix. 18-19) quotes the famous reply of the philosophic 
Stilpo to Demetrius Poliorketes, who asked him, after the siege and sack of 
Megara, if he had lost anything in the widespread ruin, Stilpo answered 
that he had suffered no loss; ‘‘ omnia bona mecum sunt.” That is, Seneca 
explains, he did not consider anything as ‘‘ good” which could be taken from 
him. This helps to illustrate what the author of IIpés ‘ES8palovs means. As 
Epictetus put it, there are more losses than the loss of property (ii. 10. 14, 





1 This is not conveyed in mpocedéEac@e, which here, as in 11, simply 
means ‘‘ accepted,” not ‘‘ welcomed.” 


X. 34, 35.] PERSECUTION 155 


GAG Set oe Képua drrordécat, va fnuwOijs, d\dov <6’ > ovbdevds drwreva Knucot 
Tov dvOpwroyr ;). A similar view pervades the fine homiletic misinterpretation 
of Dt 6° in Berachoth 9° ‘‘Man is bound to bless [God] for evil as for 
good, for it is said, Thou shalt love Jahweh thy God with all thy heart and 
with all thy soul and with all thy strength. With all thy heart means, with 
both yetzers, the good and the bad alike: w#th all thy soul means, even if he 
deprive thee of thy soul: wzth all thy strength means, with all thy posses- 
sions.” A similar view is cited in Sifre 32. Apollonius, in the last quarter 
of the second century, declares: ‘‘ We do not resent having our goods taken 
from us, because we know that, whether we live or die, we are the Lord’s ” 
(Conybeare, Monuments of Early Christianity, p. 44). 


No persecution known to us in the primitive church answers 
to the data of this passage. But some sidelights are thrown upon 
it by Philo’s vivid account of the earlier anti-Semite riots in 
Alexandria. He notes that even those who sympathized with 
the persecuted were punished: trav & os aAGGs rerovOdtwv diror 
Kal ovyyevels, OTt povoy Tais TOY TpoonKOvTWY GYEPOpats GUVTA- 
ynoav, amiyyovto, éuactuyovvTo, érpoxilovTo, Kal peTa Tacas Tas 
aixias, 6cas édUvaTo ywpyoat TA TwHMaTA avrois, 7H TEAEVTAia Kal 
épedpos Tiuwpia otavpos nv (in Flaccum, 7: m. b. neither here 
nor in 11°5f does the author of IIpds ‘EBpafovs mention the cross 
as a punishment for sufferers). Philo (zd¢d. 9) continues: wevia 
xaArerov perv, Kal padich dray KatacKkevalynta: mpos €xOpav, eAartov 
dé rys eis. TA THpata UBpews, Kav 7 Bpaxuvtary. He repeats this 
(10), telling how Flaccus maltreated Jews who had been already 
stripped of their property, iva of yey tropevdor Sirrdas cupdopas, 
meviav Ouov Kal THv év ToIs owHpacw UBpW, Kal ot pev SpdvTes, 
womep év Tos Peatpixors pipois KabvTrepKpivoyto Tovs mac xoVTAS. 


Three items of textual corruption occur in v.*4, (a) Seoplois (p!#® A D* H 
33. 104. 241. 424**, 635. 1245. 1288. 1739. 1908. I912. 2005 r vg syrbkl 
boh arm Chrys.) was eventually corrupted into decmots (uov) in 8 D° Y 256. 
1288* etc. vt eth Clem. Orig.), a misspelling (z.¢. decuots) which, with pou 
added to make sense, contributed to the impression that Paul had written 
the epistle (Ph 17, Col 418). Compare the text implied in the (Pelagian ?) 

rologue to Paul’s epp. in vg: ‘‘nam et vinctis compassi estis, et rapinam 
et vestrorum cum gaudio suscepistis.” 

(6) éavrovs (p® x A H lat boh Clem. Orig. etc.) suffered in the course of 
transmission ; it was either omitted (by C) or altered into éavrots (D K LY, 
etc., Chrys.) or év éaurots (1. 467. 489. 642. 920. 937. 1867. 1873), the dative 
being an attempt to bring out the idea that they had in their own religious 
personalities a possession beyond the reach of harm and loss, an idea pushed 
by some editors even into éavrovs, but too subtle for the context. 

(c) twaptv was eventually defined by the addition of év (tots) ovpavots 
(from Ph 37°?) in xe De H** © 6. 203. 326. 506. 1288. 1739 syr arm Chrys. 
etc, 


The reminder of vy.°2-34 is now (8-89) pressed home. My} 
droPddynte obv Thy Tappyolav bua, as evinced in peta xapas .. . 
ywvdoxovtes ktX. The phrase occurs in Dio Chrys. Orat. 34% 
(Seb0ixa py TeA€ws aroBdAnre THVv appyotav) and elsewhere in the 


156 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS  [X. 35, 36. 


sense of losing courage,. but wappyoia retains its special force 
(3°) here, and doBddAew is the opposite of xaréyew (“nolite 
itaque amittere,” vg). The zappyoia is to be maintained, Ftts 
éxer peyddnv pioOarodociay (as 1176), it is so sure of bringing 
its reward in the bliss promised by God to cheerful loyalty. 
Compare the saying of the contemporary rabbi Tarphon: ‘“ faith- 
ful is the Master of thy work, who will pay thee the reward of 
thy work, and know thou that the recompense of the reward of 
the righteous is for the time to come” (/irke Aboth 2}%).. 


Epictetus makes a similar appeal, in iv. 3. 3 f., not to throw away all that 
one has gained in character by failing to maintain one’s philosophical 
principles when one has suffered some loss of property. When you lose any 
outward possession, recollect what you gain instead of it (ri dvr’ adrod 
meptmotyn) ; otherwise, you imperil the results of all your past conscientiousness 
(Soa viv mpocéxers ceauTe@, wédANets Exxelv Aravta Tara Kal dvarpémev). And 
it takes so little to do this; a mere swerve from reasonable principle (sxpas 
amrogrpopjs Tov Adyou), a slight drowsiness, and all is lost (4r7\Oev wavra ra 
béxpt viv cuver\eyuéva). No outward possession is worth having, Epictetus 
continues, if it means that one ceases to be free, to be God’s friend, to serve 
God willingly. I must not set my heart on anything else; God does not 
allow that, for if He had chosen, He would have made such outward goods 
good for me (dya6a mweroujKer airda dv éuol), Maximus of Tyre again argued 
that while, for example, men might be willing to endure pain and discomfort 
for the sake and hope of regaining health, ‘‘if you take away the hope of good 
to come, you also take away the power of enduring present ills” (ef dpéAos 
Tid édrlda Tov wéNAovTWY ayadav, dpaipjoets Kal TIWad alpeciv TOY TapdyTwY 
kax@v, Dzss. xxxiil). 


To retain the Christian wappyoia means still Smopéver, no 
longer perhaps in the earlier sense (S7epetvate, v.°*), and yet some- 
times what has to be borne is harder, for sensitive people, than 
any actual loss. Such obedience to the will of God assumes 
many phases, from endurance of suffering to sheer waiting, and 
the latter is now urged (v.*°). “Ymopovijs yap exete xpetav (512) iva 
Td O€Anpa Tod Oeod towjoavtes (Suggested by 107®) kopionobe thy 
émayyeAlay (612 10%), ‘Though the purpose of tropovy is 
contained in the clause wa. . . érayyeXiav, yet the function of 
this clause in the sentence is not telic. Its office is not to 
express the purpose of the principal clause, but to set forth a 
result (conceived, not actual) of which the possesion of topovy 
is the necessary condition” (Burton, WZ Moods and Tenses, 

93). ‘Yrouovy and trouévew echo through this passage and 
121-7, the idea of tenacity being expressed in 10°8—1149 by aiotts. 
“Yrouovn here as in the LXX (cp. Diéat. 3548a-c) implies the 
conviction of ‘‘ hope that the evil endured will be either remedied 
or proved to be no evil.” KopionoOe does not mean to get back 
or recover, nor to gather in, but simply as in the xow7 to receive, 
to get what has been promised (rhv émayyeXiay) rather than to 
get it as our due (which is the idea of pucfarodociav), though 


X. 36-38. | THE PATIENCE OF HOPE 157 


what is promised is in one sense our due, since the promise can 
only be fulfilled for those who carry out its conditions (6!°), And 
it will soon be fulfilled. ‘‘ Have patience; it is not long now.” 
Again he clinches his appeal with an OT word, this time from the 
prophets (vv.°7 98), "Ere yap (om. p!8) puxpov (sc. €orev) Scov Saov. 
In de mutat. nomin. 44, Philo comments upon the aptness and 
significance of the word vaé in the promise of Gn 17)9 (ri yap 
evTpEeTecTE POV 7 Tayada € ETLVEVELV bea Kal TAXEWS OmorXoyety ; ). Our 
author has a similar idea in mind, though he is eschatological, as 
Philo is not. “Ogov égoy is a variant in D (on Lk 53) for 6Acyor. 
The phrase occurs in Aristoph. Wasps, 213 (té ok drrexouunOjoay 
dgov dcov otiAnv), and elsewhere, but here it is a reminiscence of 
the LXX of Is 267° (uixpov doov door). Hence, although puxpdy 
daov is also used, as by Philo, the omission of the second écov in 
the text of Hebrews by some cursives (e.g. 6. 181. 326. 1836) 
and Eusebius is unjustified. The words serve to introduce the 
real citation, apparently suggested by the term émoporis (v.*9), 
from Hab 2° 4 éay torepyon, vrdpevov airov, OTe épxopevos H&E 
Kal Ov 1.9 Xpovion’ €av VrooTetAynTat, ovK EvdoKEl H WuXH pov év adTa' 
6 dé Sikatos €x mictews pov Cyoerat, especially as the LXX makes 
the object of patient hope not the fulfilment of the vision, ze. 
the speedy downfall of the foreign power, but either messiah 
or God. (a) The author of Hebrews further adds 6 to /EPXSpEvOS, 
applying the words to Christ; (4) changes 08 ph xpovion into ob 
xpovec:! (¢) reverses the order of the last two clauses, and (d) 
shifts pou in front of ék miotews, as in the A text of the LXX. 
In the MSS of Hebrews, pov is entirely omitted by p!® DH K 
L P W cop eth Chrys. etc., to conform the text to the Pauline 
quotation (Ro 11’, Gal 31), while the original LXX text, with 
pov after riorews, is preserved in D*¥ d syr?*"**' etc, This text, 
or at any rate its Hebrew original, meant that the just man (ze. 
the Israelite) lived by God being faithful to his covenant with 
the nation. In Mpés “EBpatous the idea is that the just man of 
God is to live by his own tiotis or loyalty, as he holds on and 
holds out till the end, timidity meaning daddeva (v.°9), while the 
Coy promised by God as the reward of human loyalty is the 
outcome of wiortis (€k wiotews). But our author is interested in 
morts rather than in ¢w7. The latter is not one of his categories, 
in the sense of eternal life; this idea he prefers to express 
otherwise. What he quotes the verse for is its combination of 
God’s speedy recompense and of the stress on human ziortts, 
which he proceeds to develop at length. The note struck in 6 
Sé€ Suxatds pou also echoes on and on through the following 
passage (11* "ABeX . . . €paptupyOy etvar Bikatos, 117 NOe... 

1This second future, or xpovlce, p'® x* D*, is read by some editors (e.g. 
Tregelles, W-H, B. Weiss). 


158 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS [X. 88-XI. 1. 


THS KaTa Tiot Sixarocdvys, 11° ipydoavro Stxarocdvyy, 12!) Kapmdv 
drodi8worv Sikaroodvns, 12” mvetpacr Sixatwy teTeheropévov). The 
aim of (c) was to make it clear, as it is not clear in the LXX, 
that the subject of bmooreiAntar was 6 Sikatos, and also to make 
the warning against apostasy the climax. Kat édv brootei\ntar— 
not simply in fear (as, e.g., Dem. adv. Pant. 630, pydev troored- 
Adpevov pnd aloyvvopevov), but in the fear which makes men (cp. 
Gal 2}”) withdraw from their duty or abandon their convictions— 
od e0Soket 4 ux pou év att. It isa fresh proof of the freedom 
which the writer uses, that he refers these last seven words to 
God as the speaker; in Habakkuk the words are uttered by the 
prophet himself. Then, with a ringing, rallying note, he expresses 
himself confident about the issue. “Hpets S€ odx éopeév Strootohis 
(predicate genitive, as in 1211, unless dvdpes or é« is supplied) ets 
dmaderav, GAAG Tlotews els TepiToinow Wuxjs (=Lhoera, v.58), 
Mepimoinots occurs three times in the LXX (2 Ch 141%, Hag 29, 
Mal 3!”) and several times in the NT, but never with wuxjfs, 
though the exact phrase was known to classical Greek as an 
equivalent for saving one’s own life. ‘“YzoordXn, its antithesis, 
which in Jos. BJ. il. 277 means dissimulation, has this new 
sense stamped on it, after brooretAntar. 

The exhortation is renewed in 12!*, but only after a long 
paean on mlotis, with historical illustrations, to prove that wioris 
has always meant hope and patience for loyal members of the 
People (11**°). The historical résumé (11**°), by which the 
writer seeks to kindle the imagination and conscience of his 
readers, is prefaced by a brief introduction (111 *): 


1 Now faith means we are confident of what we hope for, Dieses of what 
we do not see. *Tt was for this that the men of old won thetr record, * It 
is by fatth we understand that the world was fashioned by the word of God, 
and thus the visible was made out of the invisible. 


Calvin rightly protested against any division here, as an in- 
terruption to the thought: ‘“‘quisquis hic fecit initium capitis 
undecimi, perperam contextum abrupit.” The following argu- 
ment of 11/49 flows directly out of 10°5°9: tyouovy is justified 
and sustained by wio7ts, and we have now a Adyos rapaxAnoews 
on pipntal tav dua aictews Kal pakpoOvuias KAnpovopovvTwy Tas 
érayyeAias (61%). Hitherto the only historical characters who 
have been mentioned have been Abraham, Melchizedek, Moses, 
Aaron, and Joshua; and Abraham alone has been mentioned 
for his ziores ; now a long list of heroes and heroines of riore 
is put forward, from Abel to the Maccabean martyrs. But first 
(vv.? 3) a general word on faith. “Eotty S€ miotts KTA. (v. a) ES 
is needless to put a comma after miots, 2.¢., “there is such a 
thing as faith, faith really exists.” Hiyé at the beginning of a 


XI. 1.] WHAT FAITH MEANS | 159 


sentence does not necessarily carry this meaning ; cp. e.g. Wis 
7) ciul pev Kaya Ovynrds, Lk 8" éorw Se atrn 7 rapaBoAn (Jn 21% 
and 1 Jn 5!’ etc.). “Eorw here is simply the copula, miots being 
the subject, and éAmLopévwy bmdctacts the predicate. This turn 
of phrase is common in Philo, who puts éo7r: first in descriptions 
or definitions (e.g. Leg. Allegor. ill. 75, éors 8 orevaypos opodpa 
Kal émirerapéevy AVN: guod deus immut. 19, gate Oe Edy pev 
airnois adyabdv mapa Geod xrr.). Needless difficulties have been 
raised about what follows. ‘Yméctacvs is to be understood in the 
sense of 3/4 “une assurance certaine” (Ménégoz) ; “faith is a 
sure confidence of thynges which are hoped for, and a certaynetie 
of thynges which are not seyne” (Tyndale), the opposite of 
iroordAy. In the parallel clause, mpdypatwv éXeyxos ob BXeTro-~ 
pévwv (which in Attic Greek would have been dv dy ris px dpa), 
grammatically rpdypatwv might go with éAmfopevey instead of 
with BAetopévwy, for the sake of emphasis (so Chrysostom, 
Oecumenius, von Soden, etc.); the sense would be unaffected, 
but the balance of the rhythm would be upset. “EXeyxos is used 
in a fresh sense, as the subjective “conviction” (the English 
word has acquired the same double sense as the Greek); as 
Euthymius said, it is an equivalent for tpayudrwv dopdtwy tAnpo- 
gopia (so syr arm eth). The writer could find no Greek term 
for the idea, and therefore struck out a fresh application for 
éXeyxos. As for édmlopévev .. . oF Bdetropevwy (3 yap Brézret ths, 
ti eAmiler; ei 5& 0 ob BA€ropev eArriLopey du tropovis arexdexopueba, 
Ro 8% 25), the unseen realities of which faith is confident are 
almost entirely in the future as promised by God, though, as the 
sequel shows, Ta od. BXewspeva (e.g. vv. ™ ® 27) are not precisely 
the same as ra éAmiloueva. It cannot be too emphatically 
pointed out that the writer did not mean to say: (a) that faith 
gave substance or reality to unseen hopes, though this is the 
interpretation of the Greek fathers (Chrysostom, for example, 
argues : éreion Ta ev eArridu dvuTocrata elvat Soxel, 4 miatis b6- 
otracw avrois xapilerar’ padrdov dé od yxapilerar GAN aito éorw 
ovocia avrdv). When the writer declares that it is by faith we 
understand that the world was created, he does not mean that 
faith imparts reality to the creation; nor, when he says, eg., the 
patriarchs lived in the expectation of a celestial Fatherland, 
that they thereby made this more real to themselves. No doubt 
this was true in a sense; but the author’s point is that just 
because these objects of hope were real, because, e.g., God had 
prepared for them a City, therefore they were justified in having 
faith. It is faith as the reflex of eternal realities or rewards 
‘promised by God which is fundamental in this chapter, the faith 
by which a good man lives. (4) Similarly, faith is not the éXeyxos 
of things unseen in the sense of “‘ proof,” which could only mean 


160 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS {XI. 1. 


that it tests, or rather attests, their reality. The existence of 
human faith no doubt proves that there is some unseen object 
which calls it out, but the writer wishes to show, not the reality 
of these unseen ends of God—he assumes these—but the fact 
and force of believing in them with absolute confidence. Such 
erroneous interpretations arise out of the notion that the writer 
is giving an abstract definition of wiotts, whereas he is describing 
it, in view of what follows, as an active conviction which moves 
and moulds human conduct. The happiest description of it is, 
‘seeing Him who is invisible” (v.?’); and this idea is applied 
widely ; sometimes it is belief in God as against the world and its 
forces, particularly the forces of human injustice or of death, 
sometimes belief in the spirit as against the senses, sometimes 
again (and this is prominent in 115) belief in the future as 
against the present. 


In the papyri (e.g. in OP. il. pp. 153, 176, where in the plural it= ‘* the 
whole body of documents bearing on the ownership of a person’s property . 
deposited in the archives, and forming the evidence of ownership”) daée- 
Tagis means occasionally the entire collection of title-deeds by which a man 
establishes his right to some property (cp. Moulton in Manchester Theological 
Essays, i. 174; Exposttor, Dec. 1903, pp. 438f.); but while this might 
suggest the metaphor, the metaphor means ‘‘confident assurance.” The 
original sense of substance or reality, as in the de Mundo, 4 (ovAANBSnvy be rv 
@ dép. pavracudtwr Td pév éore kat’ éudaow Ta Oe Kad’ brécraciv), survives 
in Dante's interpretation (Paradiso, xxiv. 61f.). He quotes the words asa 
definition of faith : 


‘* Fede é sustanzia di cose sperate, 
e >) ] 


ed argumento delle non parventi, 
adding that he understands this to be its ‘‘quidity” or essence. But the 
notion that faith imparts a real existence to its object is read into the text. 
Faith as vréoraors is “‘ realization” of the unseen, but ‘‘ realization” only in 
our popular, psychological sense of the term. The legal or logical sense of 
EXeyXos, as proof (in classical Greek and elsewhere, e.g. Jos. B/. iv. 5. 4, 
iw 8 ovr Eheyxos Tus THv Karyyopoupévwy, obre TeKurpiov) is out of place 
here. The existence of human faith is in one sense a proof that an invisible 
order exists, which can alone explain men acting as they do év miore, But 
the writer assumes that, and declares that wicris lives and moves in the 
steady light of the unseen realities. The sense of ‘‘ test,” as in Epictetus, 
iii, 10. 11 (€v0d5 6 &eyxos Tod mpdyuaros, 7) Soxiyuacla rod Piiocogobvros), 
is as impossible here as that of ‘‘rebuke”; the force of mioris in 113-4 
rests on its subjective sense as an inner conviction, which forms a motive for 
human life, and this determines the meaning of vmrécracts and \eyxos as 
applied to it in the introductory description. 


This connexion of faith with the future is emphasized by 
Philo inde Migratione Abrahami, 9, commenting on Gn 12! ww 
cot detEw. It is dew, not deckvupt, he points out—eis paptupiay 
tistews Nv eriotevoey  Woxn Ged, odK ek Tov drorekcopaTuy 
éeriderkvupevy TO €vdxapioTov, GAN ex mpoadokias TOV peAdOvTOV 
.. . vopicaca non Tapetvar Ta py wapdvta Sua THY Tod troc XO- 


XI. 1-3. ] FAITH AND CREATION 161 


pévov BeBadrnta riotw [cp. He 10%], dyafov réXeov, a&OXAov 
evpyra. Faith thus relies upon God’s promise and eagerly ex- 
pects what is to come; indeed it lives for and in the future. 
So our writer uses miotis, almost as Paul used éAmis (psycho- 
logically the two being often indistinguishable). Nor is this riots 
a novelty in our religion (v.”), he adds, év tadty yap éuaptupyOnoay 
(78) ot mpeoButepo. “Ev=81d (tadtys) as in 4° 6'° 972 1019; SY 
fis éuaptupyOy (v.4), paptupndévtes Bid THs mlotews (v.%9), OF 
mpeoBurepor (= ot marépes, 11) never bears this exact sense else- 
where in the NT, the nearest! parallel being Mt 152= Mk 735 
(rv mwapadoow tov mpecButepwv). Philo (de Abrahamo 46), 
indeed, noting that Abraham the man of faith is the first man 
called wpeoBurepos in scripture (Gn 241), reflects that this is 
significant ; 6 yap dAnOeia tpeaBurepos ovK év pryjKer xpdvwv GAN’ ev 
éraiveT@ Kai TeAciw Biw Oewpetrar. Aged worldly people can only 
be called longlived children, tov d€ dpovyjcews Kai codias Kal Tis 
mpos Oedv riatews épacbevta éyou Tis Gv évdixws eivar mpec BvreEpov. 
But our author weaves no such fancies round the word, though 
he probably understood the term in an honorific sense (cp. 
Philo, de Sobrietate, 4, mpecBitepov . . . Tov yépws kal TYynns aévov 
évonale). For épaptupndycay in this sense of getting a good 
report, cp. B. Latyschev’s Juscript. Antiguae Orae Septent. i. 
a176f guaprupnbn tovs imép gPidias Kuwdvvous . . . mapafsorcvod- 
pevos: Syl. 366% (i A.D.) dpxuréxrovas paptupybévras imd Tis 
oeuvorarns [BovAys], and the instances quoted in Deissmann’s 
Bible Studies (265). 

Before describing the scriptural record of the mpeoButepo., 
however, the writer pauses to point out the supreme proof of 
mioTis aS mpaypdtev éNeyxos oF BdeTopévwv. The very world 
within which they showed their faith and within which we are to 
show our faith, was the outcome of what is invisible (v.), and 
this conviction itself is an act of faith. Mlotet voodpev (cp. 
Ro 1%; ‘yvoety is in Hellenistic Greek the current word for the 
apprehension of the divine in nature,” A. T. Goodrick on Wis 
13) xatynpticbat (of creation, Ps 7316 ob xarypriow yAtov Kal 
cednvnv) Tods aidvas (17) prpat Oeod (the divine fiat here), eis 
(with consecutive infinitive) Td ph &k dawopevwv Td BdeTopuevov 
yeyovévat (perfect of permanence). The py goes with davopévwy, 
but is thrown before the preposition as, ¢g.,in Ac 1° od pera 
moAXas tavTas muepas (according to a familiar classical con- 
struction, Blass, § 433. 3).2. Faith always answers to revelation, 


1W. Brandt (/sidische Reinhettslehre und thre Beschretbung in den 
Evangelien, 1910, pp. 2, 3) thinks that this expression might apply to the 
more recent teachers as well as to the ancient authorities. 

2In 2 Mac 7% ovk e& dvTwy éroinoev atta 6 Oeds (A), the ovxK goes with 
the verb. 


II 


162 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS _ [XI. 1-8. 


and creation is the first revelation of God to man. Creation by 
the fiat of God was the orthodox doctrine of Judaism, and 
anyone who read the OT would accept it as the one theory 
about the origin of the world (cp. eg. the description of God in 
the Mechilta, 334, on Ex 14%! etc. as “‘ He who spoke and the 
world was,” Doiyn mn) joxwv, and Apoc. Bar. 1417: “when of old 


there was no world with its inhabitants, Thou didst devise and 
speak with a word, and forthwith the works of creation stood 
before Thee”). But the explicitness of this sentence about 
creation out of what is invisible, suggests that the writer had 
other views in mind, which he desired to repudiate. Possibly 
Greek theories like those hinted at in Wis ro!” about the world! 
being created é€ dudpdov vAns, or the statement in the de 
aeternitate mundt, 2, where Philo declares éx rod pH dvros ovdey 
yiverat, quoting Empedocles to this effect, though elsewhere Philo 
does agree that the world was made out of nothing, as, é.g., in the 
de Somniis, i. 13 (6 eds Ta avta yevvynoas od povov eis ToOvpdaves 
nyayev GAXA Kat & mpdrepov odK Hv erotnoev, od Syutovpyos pdvov 
dAXG Kal KTioTYyS avTos wv, Cp. also Apoc. Bar. 214: “O Thou 

. that hast called from the beginning of the world that which 
did not yet exist,” and Slav. En. 247: ‘I will tell thee now what 
things I created from the non-existent, and what visible things 
from the invisible”). What the ph gawdneva were, our author 
does not suggest. R. Akiba is said to have applied the words 
of Ps rox’ to anyone who rashly speculated on the original 
material of the world. Our author does not speculate; it is 
very doubtful if he intends (Windisch, M‘Neill) to agree with 
Philo’s idea (in the de opificio Mundi, 16, de confus..ling. 34) of the 
davopevos ovTos Koopos being modelled on the dowparos kai 
vontos or archetypal ideas, for the language of 8° is insufficient 
to bear the weight of this inference. 


To take eis TO... . yeyovévar as final, is a forced construction. The 
phrase does not describe the motive of xarnpric@a:, and if the writer had 
meant, ‘*so that we might know the seen came from the unseen,” ? he would 
have written this, instead of allowing the vital words mzght know to be 
supplied. 


The roll-call of the mpeoButepot (vv.4f) opens with Abel and 
Enoch, two men who showed their iors before the deluge 
(vv.46). One was murdered, the other, as the story went, never 
died ; and the writer uses both tales to illustrate his point about 
TLOTLS. 


1LXX of Gn 1? 7 5 yf fv ddparos cal dxarackevacros. 

2 At an early period 7d BAerduevoy was altered into rd Pderdpueva 
(DK LW 6. 104. 218. 326. 1288. r vg syr arm), to conform with the previous 
plurals BAerouévwv and dparvouévwy, 


XI. 4.] THE FAITH OF ABEL 163 


4 ]t was by faith (rloret, the rhetorical anaphora repeated throughout the 
section) ¢hat Abel offered God a richer sacrifice than Cain did, and thus (6 
fis, sc. mwlarews) won from God the record of being “‘just,” on the score of 
what he gave ; he died, but by hts faith he ts speaking to us still. ° lt was 
by faith that Enoch was taken to heaven, so that he never died (‘‘he was not 
overtaken by death, for God had taken himaway”). For before he was taken to 
heaven, his record was that ‘‘ he had satisfied God”; § and apart from faith it 
zs impossible (adbvaror, sc. ort) ‘* to satisfy him,” for the man who draws near 
to God must believe that he exists, and that he does reward those who seek him. 


The faith of Abel and of Enoch is not mlotis eAmfLopéver, 
which is not introduced till v.22. In 4 Mac 16” the illustrations 
of steadfast faith are (2) Abraham sacrificing Isaac, (4) Daniel in 
the den of lions, and (c) the three men in the fiery furnace; but 
in 1844 the list of noble sufferers includes (2) Abel, (4) Isaac, 
(c) Joseph in prison, (d) Phinehas, (e) the three men in the fiery 
furnace, and (f) Daniel. Sirach’s eulogy of famous men in 
Israel (44-50) has a wider sweep: Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, 
Jacob, Moses, Aaron, Phinehas, Joshua, Caleb, the judges, 
Samuel, David, Solomon, Elijah, Elisha, Hezekiah, Isaiah, Josiah, 
Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Job, the twelve prophets, Zerubbabel, Joshua 
the son of Josedek, Nehemiah, and the highpriest Simon (fe. 
down to the second century B.c.). 

The first illustration (v.*) is much less natural than most of 
those that follow. In the story of Gn 4*°, emidev 6 Geds eri *ABedr 
Kal ért ToIs Owpois adrod. But why God disregarded Cain’s sacri- 
fice and preferred Abel’s, our author does not explain. Josephus 
(Ant. i. 54) thought that an offering of milk and animals was 
more acceptable to God as being natural (rots adroydrois Kal Kara 
dvow yeyovdor) than Cain’s cereal offering, which was wrung out 
of the ground by a covetous man; our author simply argues 
that the wAciwy Ovoia of Abel at the very dawn of history was 
prompted by faith. He does not enter into the nature of this 
melova (in sense of Mt 6 or Mk 124 4 ynpa atrn 4 arwyi 
mreov mavrwv BéBrAyxev) buctay mapa (as in 14) Kdiv, offered at 
the first act of worship recorded in scripture. What seems to 
be implied is that faith must inspire any worship that is to 
be acceptable to God from anyone who is to be God’s 
Sixatos (1038), Josephus held that Abel dicaroctvys émipedeiro, 
the blood of “ABeA rod dixafov is noted in Mt 23°%5, and the 
Genesis-words ézidev 6 Oeds are here expanded by our author 
into épaptupyOy etvat Sikatos. Note the practical equivalence of 
Sapa and Ovoia, as already in 51 etc. There is nothing in Ipds 
‘EBpaious like Philo’s effort (Quaest. in Gen. 4*) to distinguish 
between dépa and @vaias as follows: 6 pev Otwy emidiatpe?, TO pev 
aipa TO Bwyd mpoxéwy, Ta Sé Kpéa oikade Kopilwv’ 6 dé Swpovpevos 
dAov Eouxe Tapaxwpely TH AapBavovre’ 6 pev otv didavros diavopeds 
olos 6 Kdiv, 6 8 pirddeos Swpytat ofov 6 “APed., 


164 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS (XI. 4. 


MrXelova: of the conjectural emendations, IIONA and HAIONA (Cobet, 
Vollgraff), the latter is favoured by Justin's reference in Dial, 29 (evddxnoe 
yap kal els Ta €Ovy, Kai Tas Ovolas 7Ocov Tap hw i) rap vpay AauBaver’ rls 
otv ére pool mepiroujs NOvyos, Ud TOU Geot paprupnbevre;), and is admitted into 
the text by Baljon and Blass (so Maynard in Exp." vii. 164f., who infers 
from paprupnberre that Justin knew IIpdés ‘Efpatous, the original text of the 
latter being air@ rod Geod). In Demosth. Prooem. 23, ijd:ov has been cor- 
rupted into zAetoy, 


In what follows, (a) the original text (uaptupodytos . . . atta 
to0 Geod) is preserved in p!® Clem. (om. 7r@ 60). (4) adra then 
became airod under the influence of the LXX, and 7@ Oe was 
inserted after mpoonveyxe to complete the sense (8° D° K L P 
r vg syr boh arm Orig. Chrys. etc.). Finally, (c) rod Geot became 
assimilated to the preceding r@ Geo, and paprupotyros ... . avrod 
TO Jed (N*¥ A D* 33. 104. 326. 1311. 1836. eth) became current, 
as though Abel witnessed to God, instead of God witnessing to 
Abel. Thus after zpoojveyxe the Greek originally ran: 8 fs 
épaptupyOn etvar Sikatos, papTupodryTos emt Tots Swpots aT Tod Geo’. 
Then another application of the LXX was added. The phrase in 
Gn 4! (dwv7 aiuatos Tod ddeAhod cov Bog mpds pe) had already 
suggested to Philo that Abel was in a sense still living (guod det. 
potiort insta. soleat, 14: 6 "ABeA, 75 tapadogdraror, dujpyrat TE Kal 
fy avypytas pev ek TS TOU apovos diavoias, cS) de thy év Geo Conv 
evoaiova’ paptupyae de 70 xpnobev Adytov, € ev & “ hovn” xpdpevos 
kat ‘* Boov” (Gen 41°) a merovOev ind Kaxod ovvdéerov TNAAVY OS 
etploxetau’ Tas yap 6 pyKér dv dvadéyerOau Suvards ;). Our author 
takes a similar line here: kat 80° adris (Ze. mictews) arobavay ere 
Aadet. Even after death, Abel’s cry is represented as reaching 
God, so Philo puts it (ibid. 20), Cn pev yap, as Kai mporepov epyy, 6 0 
reOvavar doxar, el YE Kat iKETNS WV Geod Kat pwvy Xpapevos evpioxerat. 
Only, it is not the fact that the cry was one for retribution (12%) 
which is stressed here, not the fact that his blood cried to God 
after he died; but, as AaXeciy is never used of speaking to God, 
what the writer means to suggest (as in 3!5) is that Abel’s 
faith still speaks to us (Aad, not the historic present, but =in the 
record). Not even in 1274 does he adopt the idea of a divine 
nemesis for the sufferings of the pious in past generations. He 
does not represent the blood of martyrs like Abel as crying from 
the ground for personal vengeance ; he has nothing of the spirit 
which prompted the weird vision of the wronged souls under the 
altar crying out for retribution (Rev 61). “Er Xadet means, in a 
general sense, that he is an eloquent, living witness to all ages 
(so recently Seeberg). Primasius (“qui enim alios suo exemplo 
admonet ut justi sint, quomodo non loquitur ? ”) and Chry- 
sostom (rotro kal tod fhv onpetov cort, Kal Tov Tropa TAVTWV 
adecbat, OavpalerOar kai paxapiler Oar’ 6 yap wapawdv trois dAXots 
Sixaios etvac Aare?) put this well. The witness is that rioris may 


XI. 4, 5.] THE FAITH OF ENOCH 165 


have to face the last extreme of death (124), and that it is not 
abandoned by God; dmo@avdév is never the last word upon a 
Sikatos. Compare Tertullian’s argument from Abel, in De Scor- 
piace, 8: “a primordio enim justitia vim patitur. Statim ut coli 
Deus coepit, invidiam religio sortita est: qui Deo placuerat, 
occiditur, et quidem a fratre; quo proclivius impietas alienum 
sanguinem sectaretur, a suo auspicata est. Denique non modo 
justorum, verum etiam et prophetarum.” 

The difficulty of XaXe? led to the tame correction AaAe?rac in D K L d eth, 
etc. Aade?ra: as passive (= Aéyerat) i is nearly as impossible as middle ; to say 
that Abel, even after death, is still spoken of, is a tepid idea. The writer of 
Hebrews meant more than an immortal memory, more even than Epictetus 
when he declared that by dying ére Ge. kai ws &de. one may do even more 
good to men than he did in life, like Socrates (iv. 1. 169, Kal viv Xwxpdrous 
amobavdvros ovbev Hrrov Hh Kal wrelov whériuds eoTw avOpwrots  uYHUN Gv ere 
fv Erpagev h elev). 

The miotis “Evéx (vv.> 6) is conveyed in an interpretation 
of the LXX of Gn 5% kai einpéotncey “Evox TO Ged" Kal ovdx 
nupioKero, Sudte peteOnkey avtov 6 Geos. The writer takes the two 
clauses in reverse order. Enoch peteté6y tod (with infinitive of 
result) ph iSetv Odvarov (Lk 27°) kat (“indeed,” introducing the 
quotation) obx npicKero (on this Attic augmented form, which 
became rare in the xow7, see Thackeray, 200) Sidte eapneel 
adtév 6 Beds, mpd yap (resuming miore. peteTéOn) THs petabéocws 
pepaptupyta. (in the scripture record ; hence the perfect, which 
here is practically aoristic) Brceerttepet TO OeoG (etapeorety in its 
ordinary Hellenistic sense of a servant giving satisfaction to his 
master). For ebpicxeoPar=die (be overtaken or surprised by 
death),! cp. Epict. iii 5. 5 f., ov« oidas 6rt Kal vdcos kal Odvaros 
kataXaBetv jpas opeiAovaiv ti wote movodvTas; . . . epuol pev yap 
KarakndOnvat yevowro pndevos GAXov eriehoupevyr 7 7] THS Tpoapecews 


TIS €nnS ys Tatra ériTndevwv Oérdw etpeOivat: IV. 10. 12, d&yaGos 
ov arobavy, yevvaiay mpagwv emiTeNav. érel yap det mavTws eeaguy ea 
dvdyKn | ti mote ToLovvTa. evpeOnvar . . . TL ovv Oédes ToLdV EbpeOHVvaL 


tr6 tov Oavdrov; Here etpePjvar (with or without rod deer) 
is a synonym for Katadyn pOnvat or amroOaveiv, as in Ph 3° (etpeG 
év atta). 

Both Clem. Rom. (9?) and Origen, like Tertullian, appear to have read 
odx etpéOn atrod Odvaros in Gn 5%; and Blass therefore reads here ovx 
nuptoxer(o) avrot Odvaros, especially as it suits his scheme of rhythm. This 
is linguistically possible, as evpicxer@ar=be (cp. Fr. se trouver), e.g. in Lk 

1738, Ph 28. Meré@yKev was turned into the pluperfect uereréOnxev by x* 
D° iy 5. 204. 250,257. 320: 337. 378. 393. 491. 500. 623. 1611, etc. 


Traditions varied upon Enoch (£47. 12952), and even Alex- 
andrian Judaism did not always canonize him in this way. (a) 


1 In Sifre Deut. 304, the angel of death sought Moses, but found him not 
(xy x). 


166 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS [XI 5, 6. 


The author of Wis 41°, without mentioning his name, quotes 
Gn 5% as if it meant that God removed Enoch from life early 
(kai Cov peragd dpaprwdav perereOn) 1 in order to prevent him from 
sharing the sin of his age (npwdyn, py Kaxia dAAdEn ovverw adrod, 
H Soros ararnon Wxyv avrov); he departed young, but his 
removal was a boon mercifully granted by God to his youthful 
piety. (4) Philo views him in de Abrahamo, 3 (cp. de praem. 
3-4), aS a type of perdvow. Quoting Gn 5*%4 he points out that 
peraGeots means a change for the better, and that odx ytpicKero 
is therefore appropriate, t@ Tov dpyatov Kat éridnrrov aradnrAipbat 
Blov kat jdavicba Kat pyxed ecipioxerOat, xabarep ei pnde TiHV 
apxnv éyevero. The Greek version of Sir 441° echoes the same 
tradition ("Evwx etypéorycey Kupiw Kat perereOy, trodeypa 
peravolas Tats yeveais), viz. that pweréOyxev implies the effacement 
of Enoch’s blameable past, or at any rate that he was enrolled in 
better company. Our author does not share this view. His 
general deduction in v.6 expands the description of wmiortes in v.?. 
To say that a man has satisfied God is to pronounce the highest 
possible eulogy upon him, says Philo! (de Abrahamo, 6, “7d Oo 
evnpéotncey’” ov Ti yevoir av ev TH ioe KpeitTov; Tis KaAoKayabias. 
' évapyéorepos éXeyxos;), though he is referring to Noah, not to 
Enoch. Our author explains that to satisfy God necessarily 
implies mioris (v. ®) in the sense of 10%. Motedcar yap Set tov 
Tpocepxdpevov 7 Ged (41° etc.) 6 6rt €oTiv (so pict. ii. 26. 1 5s 
Stu Kai gore Kal Karas Srouel Td dAa) Kal Tots &xLntodow adTov 
proBarodétns (cf. v.26 10%) yiverat. As for the first element of 
belief, in the existence of God (87 éottv), the early commentators, 
from Chrysostom (dre éorw* ov 76 ti éorw: cp. Tert. adv. Marc. 
i. 17, “primo enim quaeritur an sit, et ita qualis sit ”) and Jerome 
(on Is 61-7, in Anecdota Maredsolana, i lil, 3. 110: ‘cumque idem 
apostolus Paulus scribit in alio loco, Credere oportet accedentem 
ad Deum quia est, non posuit quis et qualis sit debere cognosci, 
sed tantum quod sit. Scimus enim esse Deum, scimusque quid 
non sit; quid autem et qualis sit, scire non possumus ”) onwards, 
emphasize the fact that it is God’s existence, not his nature, 
which is the primary element of faith. Philo does declare that 
the two main problems of enquiry are into God’s existence and 
into his essence (de Monarch. 1. 4-6), but our author takes the 
more practical, religious line, and he does not suggest how faith in 

1 Philo fancifully allegorizes the phrase in the de mutat. nomin. 4: 
POelperar ody elxdrws 7d yeGdes cal xaradverat, Srayv Sros Se Srwv 6 voids 
evaperreiy mpoéA\ntat Oew* omdviov dé Kal rd yévos Kal wdrdts edpioxduevor, 
wiv ovK advvarov yevécBar’ Sndot 5é 7d xpnobev emi Tod ’Evwyx Adytov Tdde° 
ednpéornce 5é’Hvax Te 0e@ Kal obx evpirxeTo* rod yap <dv> creWdperds Tis 
eUpo. rayabdv rotro; .. . obx evdploxero 6 evapnorioa stpbros TH Oew, ws 
dy Oxrou vrapxros mev Ov, droxpuTréuevos 5é cal rhy els TavTd cbvodov nud 
Gmrodidpaokwv, éredh Kal werareOjvar Aéyerat. 


iG. 7s) _ FAITH AND GOD 167 


God’s existence is to be won or kept. When objectors asked 
him why he believed in the existence of the gods, Marcus 
Aurelius used to reply: mparov pév Kal der dpatol ciow* éretra 
MEVTOL OVE THY WuXHY TIV E“AUTOD EWpaKa Kal OUWS TIO’ OVTWS OdV 
kal Tovs Oeovs, €& dv tHs Svvdpews aitdv ExaoroTe weipGpat, éx 
TovTwy oTt Te cio KataAauBavw Kat aidodvpat (xii. 28). We have 
no such argument against atheism here; only the reminder that 
faith does imply a belief in the existence of God—a reminder 
which would appeal specially to those of the readers who had been 
born outside Judaism. Belief in the existence of God is for our 
author, however, one of the elementary principles of the Chris- 
tian religion (6!); the stress here falls on the second element, 
kat... pioOamodérns ytverat. When the Stoics spoke about 
belief in the divine existence, they generally associated it with 
belief in providence; both Seneca (Z/. xcv. 50, ‘‘ primus est 
deorum cultus deos credere . . . scire illos esse qui praesident 
mundo, quia universa vi sua temperant, qui humani generis 
tutelam gerunt interdum curiosi singulorum”) and Epictetus (e.g. 
li, 14. 11, A€yovow of Pirdcopot dtu pabeiv det rpOrov Tovro, ste 
éote Feds Kat mpovoet TOY GAwy: Enchir. xxxi. 1, THS wept Tods Beods 
evoeBeias icOw dtu Td KUpLmbTatov exeivd eat dpOds trorAnWes Tepi 
avTav éxew Os dvTwy Kal dtocKovvTw Ta CAG KAaA@s Kal diKaiws) are 
contemporary witnesses to this connexion of ideas, which, indeed, 
is as old as Plato (Leges, go5d, dre pev yap Geot + eiciv Kai 
avOporwy érieAodvvTat). 

Tots éx{itodow adtéy (for which p!8 P read the simple Cyrodow) 
denotes, not philosophic enquiry, but the practical religious quest, 
as in the OT (¢g. Ac 1517, Ro 3"). This is not Philo’s view, 
e.g., in the Leg. Alleg. 35 ci d& Cytotoa ebpyoes Pedy adydov, 
moAAols yap ovK epavépwoev Eavtov, GAN ateAH Tv omrovdyy axpt 
mavTos éoyov' e€apKkel pévtou mpos petovoiay ayalav Kat YAov TO 
fnreiv povov, del yap ai emt Ta Kad dppal Kav TOU TéAOVS aTvXdoL 
TOUS xpwuevous Tpoevppaivovow. But our author has a simpler 
belief; he is sure that the quest of faith is always successful. 
By God’s reward he means that the faith of man reaching out to 
God is never left to itself, but met by a real satisfaction; God 
proves its rewarder. Such faith is a conviction which illustrates 
11}, for the being of God is an unseen reality and his full reward 
is at present to be hoped for. 

A still more apt illustration of miotts as the éXeyxos mpaypatwv 
ov BXeropévwv which becomes a motive in human life, now occurs 
in (v.7) the faith which Noah showed at the deluge when he 
believed, against all appearances to the contrary, that he must 
obey God’s order and build an ark, although it is true that in 
this case the unseen was revealed and realized within the lifetime 
of the 8Sixatos. Like Philo, our author passes from Enoch te 


168 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS [xI. 7. 


Noah, although for a different reason. Philo ranks Noah as the 
lover of God and virtue, next to Enoch the typical penitent (de 
Abrah. 3y 5) ELKOTWS TO peTaVEVONnKOTL TaTTEL KATA TO EENS TOV Deopidn 
Kat iAdperov) ; here both are grouped as examples of tiotts. 
Sirach (4417!) also passes at once from Enoch to Noah the dikatos. 

7 Tt was by Saith (riores) that Noah, after being told by God (xpnuariabels, 
8°, sc. mapa Tot Beov) of what was still unseen (r&v pniérw BreTopévwy, 7.€. 
the deluge), reverently (ethaBnOels, cp. 5") constructed (karecxevacer, as I P 


3°) an ark to save his household ; thus he condemned the world and became 
hetr of the righteousness that follows faith. 


The writer recalls, though he does not quote from, the story 
of Gn 615f, fMiorer goes closely with edAdByOeis xateckedacer, 
and epi t. p. BAetronevwv goes with xpnpatioGeis (as Jos. Azz. iv. 
102, éxpyparilero wept dv édetro), not with edAaBnbeis, which is not 
a synonym for dofnbeis—the writer is at pains always to exclude 
fear or dread from faith (cp. vv.2% 27), Eis owrtyptay is to be 
taken as = “‘to save alive” (Ac 2779 raaa éAmis Tod cwlerOat Hpas, 
2754 rodto yap mpos THS bperépas cwrypias drdpye). Av As (ze. by 
the faith he thus exhibited; as both of the following clauses 
depend on this, it cannot refer to the ark, which would suit only 
the first) katéxpwe Tov Kédopov, Where KOT EK pLVEV corresponds to 
what is probably the meaning of Wis 4’ Kataxpwvet d€ diKkatos 
KaLOV tous Lavras doeBels, though kapov (=Oavev) is not the 
point of Hebrews, which regards Noah’s action as shaming the 
world, throwing its dark scepticism into relief against his own 
shining faith in God (Josephus, in Azz. i. 75,. puts it less 
pointedly: 6 dé Oeds rotrov pev THs Sixaocivys HyaTyGE, KaTedixale 
8 éxeivous); Kécpos here (as in v.*8) means sinful humanity, 
almost in the sense so common in the Johannine vocabulary, 
the koopos adoeBav of 2 P 25. Philo (de congressu erudit. 17) 
notes that Noah was the first man in the OT to be specially 
called (Gn 6°) 8ixatos; but our author, who has already called 
Abel and Noah dikatos, does not use this fact; he contents 
himself with saying that tis kata miotw Sixaroodvns éyéveto KAnpd- 
vonos, 2.¢. he became entitled to, came into possession of, the 
dixacoovvy which is the outcome or property (kara xrX., aS in 
Hellenistic Greek, cp. Eph 115, a periphrasis for the possessive 
genitive) of such faith as he showed. Atxatoovvn here is the 
state of one who is God’s dikatos (6 dikatos pov, 108), A vivid 
description of Noah’s faith is given in Mark Rutherford’s novel, 
The Deliverance, pp. 162, 163. 


The faith of Abraham, as might be expected, receives more 
attention than that of any other (cp. Ac 776), It is described in 
three phases (8 9-10. 17-19) ; the faith of his wife Sara is attached to 
his (11-12), and a general statement about his immediate descend- 


XI. 7-9. ] THE FAITH OF ABRAHAM 169 


ants is interpolated (15-16) before the writer passes from the second 
to the third phase. As in Sirach and Philo, Abraham follows 
Noah. ‘‘Ten generations were there from Noah to Abraham, 
to show how great was His longsuffering ; for all the generations 
were provoking Him, til] Abraham our father came and received 
the reward of them all” (Pirke Adoth 53). 


8 Tt was by faith that Abraham obeyed his call to go forth to a place 
which he would recetve as an inheritance ; he went forth, although he did not 
know where he was to go. * It was by faith that he ‘‘sojourned” in the 
promised land, as in a foreign country, residing in tents, as did Isaac and 
Jacob, who were co-heirs with him of the same promise ; he was waiting for 
the City with tts fixed foundations, whose builder and maker is God. 


The first phase (v.8) is the call to leave Mesopotamia and 
travel West, which is described in Gn 121, The writer does not 
dwell, like Philo (de Abrahamo, 14), on the wrench of tearing 
oneself from one’s home. But, as Philo says that Abraham 
started dua to KeAevoOjvar, our author begins with kadovpevos. 
When the call came, he obeyed it—émpxoucev éfeMetv (epexegetic 
infinitive), a reminiscence of Gn 12!)4 kai elrey xvpios To 
"ABpap, "E€eAOe . . . Kai eropevOn “ABpap xadarep ehadrnoev aito 
kvptos. He went out from Mesopotamia, ph émotdpevos moi 
€pxetat, his faith being tested by this uncertainty. So Philo (de 
Migr. Abrah. 9) notes the point of the future deéw in Gn 12); 
it 1s eis paptupiay rictews nv éeriotevoev 4 Woxn Jew. 

The insertion of 6 before kadovpevos (A D 33. 256. 467. 1739. 2127 sah 
boh arm Thdt.) turns the phrase into an allusion to Abraham’s change of 
name in Gn 17°, which is irrelevant to his earlier call to leave the far East. 

The second phase (vv.® !°) is the trial of patience. He did 
not lose heart or hope, even when he did reach the country 
appointed to him, although he had to wander up and down it as 
a mere foreigner, eis (=év, Mk 1316 Ac 84°) . . . ddotpiar. 
He found the land he had been promised still in the hands of 
aliens, and yet he lived there, lived as an alien in his own 
country! Mapwxyoev is the opposite of katéxyoev (as in Gn 373), 
and with a fine touch of paradox the writer therefore goes on to 
describe Abraham as év oxnvats xatounoas, contented patiently 
to lead a wandering, unsettled life. Such was all the ‘‘ residence” 
he ever had! What sustained him was his wriotts (v.19), his eager 
outlook for the City, fs texvitns Kal Snproupyds 6 Beds. Compare 
the scholion on Lucian’s Jov. Zrag. 38: bv d1 Gedv Kat Snpcovpyov 
6 evoeBs avevpyKos Aoyiopos Epopov Kal TExXViTHV TOU TaVvTOS 
mpoeutpemicev. Texvirns is not a LXX term, and only began to 
be used of God in Alexandrian Judaism (e.g. in Wis 13!). This 
is the one place in the NT where it is applied to God; after- 
wards (e.g. Did. 128; Diognetus, 72) it became more common. 
Anptoupyss is equally unique as a NT term for God, but it occurs 


170 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS [ XI. 9-12. 


in 2 Mac 4}, and was used in classical literature frequently for a 
subordinate deity (cp. Schermann, Zexte u. Untersuchungen, 
xxxiv. 26. 23). In Apoc. Esdrae (ed. Tisch. 32) the phrase 
occurs, 6 raons THS KTicews Syptovpydés. Our author simply writes 
Texvityns Kal Syptoupyds as a rhetorical expression for maker or 
creator (8), without differentiating the one term from the other, 
as “designer” and “constructor” (cp. Philo, gués rer. div. 27, 
6 texvitns ... Qvika tov Kdcpov eOnurovpye: de mut. nom. 4, 
COnke TA TAVTO. O yevVNTAS Kal TexVLTEVOAS TaTHp, BoTE TO “ eyd elt 
eds aos” ivov éott TH “ éyw ele moinrys Kat Snpwoupyds ”). 

In % the writer adds a new touch (as if to suggest that 
Abraham propagated his wiorts) in peta “loadk Kat “laxép !—who 
shared the same outlook—rév cuykAnpovépwv (a xown, though 
not a LXX, term for co-heir) rijs émayyeAtas tis adtis. Their 
individual faith is noted later (vv.”° 21). In sketching his fine 
mystical interpretation of Abraham’s hope, the author ignores 
the fact that Jacob, according to Gn 33!" (éroincey atta éxet 
oixias), did erect a permanent settlement for himself at Sukkoth. 
His immediate interest is not in Isaac and Jacob but in 
Abraham, and in the contrast of the tent-life with the stable, 
settled existence in a city—the idea which recurs in 122? 1314, 
It is a Philonic thought in germ, for Philo (Zeg. Alleg. 377) 
declares that the land promised by God to Abraham is a woAts 
ayaby Kal moAAy Kal opddpa eddaiuwv, typifying the higher con- 
templation of divine truth in which alone the soul is at home, or 
that the soul lives for a while in the body as in a foreign land 
(de Somniis, 154), till God in pity conducts it safe to pyntpdmoXts or 
immortality. The historical Abraham never dreamed of a wéXts, 
but our author imaginatively allegorizes the promised land once 
more (cp. 4°£), this time as (12?) a celestial réAs or Jerusalem, 
like Paul and the apocalyptists. According to later tradition 
in Judaism, the celestial Jerusalem was shown in a vision to 
Abraham at the scene of Gn 15%?! (Apoc. Bar. 4*), or to Jacob at 
Bethel (Beresh. rabba on Gn 281"). *EgeSéxeto yap—and this 
showed the steady patience( 10°*) and inward expectation (11!) of 
his faith—rhy tods beneXtous (rovs, because it was such foundations 
that the tents lacked) €xoucay méktw. No doubt there was some- 
thing promised by God which Abraham expected and did get, in 
this life; the writer admits that (645-15), But, in a deeper sense, 
Abraham had yearnings for a higher, spiritual bliss, for heaven 
as his true home. The fulfilment of the promise about his 
family was not everything; indeed, his real faith was in an 

“~ unseen future order of being (111). However, the realization of 
the one promise about Isaac (618-15) suggests a passing word 
upon the faith of Sara (vv.1 #2), 


1 According to Jubilees 19'** Abraham lived to see Jacob’s manhood. 


260 ys He THE FAITH OF SARA 171 


1 Tt was by faith that even (kal) Sara got strength to conceive, bearing a 
son when she was past the age for zt—because she considered she could rely on 
Him who gave the promise. 1 Thus a single man, though (kal ratra) he was 
physically impotent, had issue in number ‘‘ like the stars in heaven, countless 
as the sand on the seashore.” 


This is the first instance of a woman’s faith recorded, and she 
is a married woman. Paul (Ro 4!) ignores any faith on her 
part. Philo again praises Sarah, but not for her faith; it is her 
loyalty and affection for her husband which he singles out for 
commendation, particularly her magnanimity in the incident of 
Gn 16? (de Abrahamo, 42-44). Our author declares that even 
in spite of her physical condition (kat atrh Xdppa), she believed 
God when he promised her a child. The allusion is to the tale 
of Gn 1715-217, which the readers are assumed to know, with its 
stress on the renewal of sexual functions in a woman of her age. 
This is the point of xat airy, not ‘mere woman that she was ” 
(Chrysostom, Oec., Bengel), nor ‘fin spite of her incredulity ” 
(Bleek), nor “Sara likewise,” z.e. as well as Abraham (Delitzsch, 
Hofmann, von Soden, Vaughan), owing to her close connexion 
with Abraham (Westcott, Seeberg), though the notion of “ like- 
wise” is not excluded from the author’s meaning, since the 
husband also was an old man. A gloss (oretpa, 7 oreipa, 7 
orTeipa ovaa) Was soon inserted by D* P, nearly all the versions, 
and Origen. ‘This is superfluous, however, and probably arose 
from dittography (ZSAPPAZTEIPA). ‘The general idea is plain, 
though there is a difficulty in S8dvapw €daBev (ze. from God) 
eis KataBodhy oméppatos=cis TO KataBddAcobor oréppa, te. for 
Abraham the male to do the work of generation upon her. This 
is how the text was understood in the versions, e.g. the Latin (‘in 
conceptionem seminis”). Probably it was what the writer meant, 
though the expression is rather awkward, for xataBoA7 o7mépparos 
means the act of the male; eis trodoxiv orépyatos would have 
been the correct words. This has been overcome (a) by omit- 
ting kal adth Xdppa as a gloss, or (4) by reading adth Xdppa. 
(a) certainly clears up the verse, leaving Abraham as the subject 
of both verses (so Field in (Votes on Transi. of NT, p. 232, and 
Windisch) ; (4) is read by Michaelis, Storr, Rendall, Hort, and 
Riggenbach, the latter interpreting it not as “‘ dativus commodi,” 
but= “along with.” If the ordinary text is retained, the idea 
suggested in xal airy Xdppa is made explicit in mapa Katpov 
HAuktas. What rendered such faith hard for her was her physical 
condition. Philo (de Adrah. 22) applies this to both parents 
(ndn yap trepyAtkes yeyovdres Sia pakpov yhpas aréyvwoayv Tatoos 
o7opav), and a woman in the period of life described in Gn 1811-2 
is called by Josephus ytvatoy tHv 7AtKkiav 75 mpoBeBAnkds (Ant. 
vii. 8. 4). 


172 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS [XxI. 11, 12. 


His rd rexvGoa (D* P 69. 436. 462. 1245. 1288. 2005 syrbk!) after haBev 
is a harmless gloss. The addition of érexey (x° K L P lat arm) after #Acklas 
was made when the force of cal (=even) before rapa xatpdvy was missed. 


Mordv yjoato Tov émayyetkdpevoy (10%) is an assertion which 
shows that the author ignores her sceptical laughter in Gn 18}2; 
he does not hesitate (cp. v.27) to deal freely with the ancient 
story in order to make his point, and indeed ignores the equally 
sceptical attitude of Abraham himself (Gn 171"). To be mordés 
in this connexion is to be true to one’s word, as Cicero observes 
in the de Officiis (1. 7: ““fundamentum autem justitiae fides, id 
est dictorum conventorumque constantia et veritas”). The 
promise was fulfilled in this life, so that Sara’s faith resembles 
that of Noah (v.’). The fulfilment is described in v.!*, where, 
after 8156 Kai add” évds (ze. Abraham),! éyevynPyoov (p’ & Lb 
1739, etc.) is read by some authorities for éyev7Oncav (A D K P 
etc.), though the latter suits the dad in dq’ évdg rather better. 
In either case something like réxva must be understood. °A@¢’ 
évds is resumed in kal taita (a v./. in 1 Co 68 for the less 
common kali Tovro) vevexpwpévou (in the sense of Ro 4?%). 
Gen. r. on Gn 251 applies Job 147% to Abraham, but the plain 
sense is given in Augustine’s comment ( C7vi¢. Dez, xvi. 28): “sicut 
alunt, qui scripserunt interpretationes nominum Hebraeorum, 
quae his sacris literis continentur, Sara interpretatur princeps mea, 
Sarra autem uirtus. Unde scriptum est in epistula ad Hebraeos: 
Fide et ipsa Sarra uirtutem accepit ad emissionem seminis. 
Ambo enim seniores erant, sicut scriptura testatur; sed illa 
etiam sterilis et cruore menstruo iam destituta, propter quod 
iam parere non posset, etiam si sterilis non fuisset. Porro si 
femina sit prouectioris aetatis, ut ei solita mulierum adhuc 
fluant, de iuuene parere potest, de seniore non potest; quamuis 
adhuc possit ille senior, sed de adulescentula gignere, sicut 
Abraham post mortem Sarrae de Cettura potuit [Gn 251], quia 
uiuidam eius inuenit aetatem. Hoc ergo est, quod mirum 
commendat apostolus, et ad hoc dicit Abrahae iam fuisse corpus 
emortuum, quoniam non ex omni femina, cui adhuc esset 
aliquod pariendi tempus extremum, generare ipse in illa aetate 
adhuc posset.” This elucidates He 111) 1%, In what follows, 
the author is quoting from the divine promise in Gn 2217, a 
passage much used in later Jewish literature,? though this is the 
only full allusion to it in the NT (cf. Ro 9?7). 

Before passing to the third phase of Abraham’s faith, the 
writer adds (vv.!%16) a general reflection on the faith of the 
patriarchs, an application of vv.* 1°. There were promises which 

1Ts 512 éuBréWare els ’ABpadu Tov warépa tuwv . . . Ore els Fv. . 

2 The comparison of a vast number to stars and sands is common in Greek 
and Latin literature; cp. ¢.g. Pindar’s Olymp. 2°8, and Catullus, 612%, 


XI. 13. | THE FAITH OF THE PATRIARCHS 173 


could not be fulfilled in the present life, and this aspect of faith 
is now presented. 

13( These all died in fatth without obtaining the promises ; they only 
saw them far away and hailed them, owning they were ‘‘ strangers and 
exiles” upon earth. 4 Now people who speak in this way plainly show they 
are in search of a fatherland. © If they thought of the land they have left 
behind, they would have time to go back, ® but they really aspire to the better 
land in heaven. ._That is why God ts not ashamed to be called their God; he 
has prepared a City for them.) 

Odto. mdvtes (those first mentioned in 1%, particularly the 
three patriarchs) died as well as lived kata miotiwv, which is 
substituted here for mwiore. either as a literary variety of ex- 
pression, or in order to suggest wioris as the sphere and standard 
of their characters. The writer argues that the patriarchs 
already possessed a iors in eternal life beyond the grave; 
their very language proves that. Mt Koptodpevor explains the 
mioris in which they died; this is the force of wy. All they had 
was a far-off vision of what had been promised them, but a 
vision which produced in them a glad belief—idévres kat domacd- 
pevot, the latter ptc. meaning that they hailed the prospect with 
delight, sure that it was no mirage. ‘The verb here is less meta- 
phorical than, e.g., in Musonius (ed. Hense), vi. : tiv d€ Lwnv as 
Tov ayabav péytatov doralopueda, or Philo (éydanoov ody dperas Kal 
doraca ux TH veavrov, guis rer. div. heres, 8). ‘Two interesting 
classical parallels may be cited, from Euripides (Zon, 585-587: 


3 + Deak > , A , 
ov TavTov «loos Paiverat THY TpayyaTwr 
mpocwlev dvtwy eyyvOev & Spwpevwr. 

5 arate \ ‘\ XN \ 3 / 
eyo d€ ryv pev ovudopay dorafopac) 


and Vergil (dex. 35%4 “TItaliam laeto socii clamore salutant”). 
Chrysostom prettily but needlessly urges that the whole metaphor 
is nautical (trav mAcdvTwy Kal mwoppwlev Spdvtwv Tas TOdELS Tas 
mwoGoupevas, as mpl H eioedOely cis aiTas TH mpoopyoe aBovres 
avras oiKeovvTat). 

Komodpevo: (p!® x* P W 33, etc.) is more likely to be original than a con- 
formation to 10° 1159; the sense is unaffected if we read the more common 
haBdrres (8° DK LW 6. 104. 1739, Orig.). The reading of A arm (mpocdetd- 
evo) makes no sense. 

Kat éuodoynoarvtes, for to reside abroad carried with it a 
certain stigma, according to ancient opinion (cp. eg. £, 
Aristeae, 249, kadov év idia. Kat Snv cat teAevTav. 7 Se Eevia rots 
pev wévnor Katappdovyow épyacerar, Tots d€ mAovotois dvetdos, ds 
dua. Kaxiav éxremtwxoow: Sir 2972-28 etc.). The admission, éte 
févo. kal mapemiSynpot elow emt yfs, is a generalization from the 
Oriental deprecation of Jacob in Gn 47° (elev “IaxoB rd Papas, 
ai Hucpar TOV érwv THS Cwns pov Gs TwapoLK® xrA.), and the similar 
confession of Abraham in Gn 23‘ to the sons of Heth, wdpouxos 


174 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS [ XI. 13. 


Kal maperionpos eyo eis pel” tudv. The ézi yns is a homiletic 
touch, as in Ps 11919 (wdporkds cit ev TH yH). In both cases this 
époroyia THs éAmidos (10%) is made before outsiders, and the 
words émi ris ys start the inference (vv.!416) that the true home 
of these confessors was in heaven. Such a mystical significance 
of vor kal mapemiSypor, which had already been voiced in the 
psalter, is richly and romantically developed by Philo, but it never 
became prominent in primitive Christianity. Paul’s nearest 
approach to it is worded differently (Phil 32°, where 76 zroAtrevpa 
corresponds to warpis here). In Eph 2!?-!9, indeed, Christians are 
no longer €€vot kai maporxor, for these terms are applied literally 
to pagans out of connexion with the chosen People of God. The 
only parallel to the thought of Hebrews is in 1 P, where Christians 
are mapemionjot (11) and wapofkor kal waperdyjuot (24), The term 
€évoris used here as a synonym for waporxor, which (cp. Eph 2!* 19) 
would be specially intelligible to Gentile Christians. Iapezi- 
dyos only occurs in the LXX in Gn 234, Ps 3918; in the 
Egyptian papyri wapemidypotrvres (consistentes) denotes foreigners 
who settled and acquired a domicile in townships or cities like 
Alexandria (GCP. i. 40, 55; cp. A. Peyron’s Papyri graect R. 
Laur. Muset Aegyptii, 3° rév raperiynpotytwv kat | Ka |rovkovvTwy 
e[v] [r]avrai[s] €évwv), and for évo.=peregrini, Zp. Arist. 109 f. 
The use of such metaphorical terms became fairly common in 
the moral vocabulary of the age, quite apart from the OT, eg. 
Marcus Aurelius, ii. 17 (6 d& Bids woAemos Kat S€vov éridnpuia), A 
similar symbolism recurs in the argument of Epictetus (ii. 23, 36 f.) 
against the prevalent idea that logic, style, and eloquence are the 
end of philosophy: oiov et tus dmiov eis tHv warpida tiv éavrod 
kal dvodevwv mavdoKelov KaXOv apécavTos a’T@ Tov mavOokeiov Kata- 
pévor ev TH Tavdokelw. avOpwre, éreAadhou cov THs tpoHecews’ ovK Eis 
TovTO Woeves, GANG Oia TOVTOV . . . TO OE TpoKeipevov exelvo" <is THY 
marpioa éraveAGeitv. In a more specifically religious sense, it is 
expressed in the saying of Anaxagoras quoted by Diogenes 
Laertius (ii. 3. 7, pos Tov elrdvra, “ovdév cor péAce THS waTpisos,” 
“ebpyue” epy, “euor yap Kal odddpa pede THS matpidos,” det~as 
tov ovpavév). According to Philo, the confession that they were 
strangers and pilgrims meant that the soul in this world longed 
to return to its pre-existent state in the eternal order, and could 
never feel at home among things material. So, e.g., de confus. 
ling. 17, 8a TovTo of Kata Mwvojv codol ravres eicdyovrat ‘‘ rapot- 
KOvVTES”” at yap TovTwY Yuxal oréAAOVTAL pev aroiKkiav ovdEéroTE THV 
e€ ovpavod, cidfacr dé Eevexa tod piAobedpovos Kat diAropabois 
els THY Tepiyecov pio arodnuety . . . emavépyovra éxeioe wddw, 
ddev HpunOnoav TO rpGrov, Tatpida pev Tov oipavioy xdpov év @ 
moXutevovTat, Eévnv O€ Tov mepiyevov év @ TapwKnoay vopuiloveat KTA. 
In Cherub. 33, 34, Commenting on zadporxor in Lv 2578, he argues 


aL, 13-15. | THE FAITH OF THE PATRIARCHS 175 


that this is the real position of all wise souls towards God, since 
each of us is a stranger and sojourner in the foreign city of the 
world where God has for a time placed us till we return to Him. 


The metaphor had been applied, in a derogatory sense, by Sallust to the 
lazy and sensual men who never know what real life means, but who pass 
through it heedlessly: ‘‘many human beings, given over to sensuality and 
sloth (‘ ventri atque somno’), uneducated, and uncultured, have gone through 
life like travellers ” (‘‘ vitam sicuti peregrinantes transiere,” Catz/. 2). 


Such a confession proves (v.!*) that the men in question are 
not satisfied with the present outward order of things; éudavi- 
Covow (Esth 27? cai adri évepdvicey TO Bacirel Ta THs értBovdrs : 
Ac 23), OGJS. (iil A.D.) 42°, Syl, 226° Hv re wapovoiav éudavi- 
cavtwy tov Paciews), they thus avow or affirm, ém matpida 
émuLntodow (Valckenaer’s conjecture, éri Cyrotor, is ingenious but 
needless, cp. 1314). For mdtpis in a mystical sense, compare Philo, 
de Agric. 14, commenting on Gn 474): 7@ yap évti Taca Wry) 
gogpod matpida pev otpavdv, gevyv dé yjv eAaxe, Kal vopiler tov 
pev aodias oikov idiov, Tov S¢ cwparos 6Ovelov, © Kal mapemionpetv 
olerat. Here it is “‘heaven, the heart’s true home.” The 
creditable feature in this kind of life was that these men had 
deliberately chosen it.1 Had they liked, they might have taken 
another and a less exacting line (v.°). Ei péev (as in 84) épyy- 
pévevoy (referring to the continuous past) xrA. The prnpovevovow 
of 8* D* was due to the influence of the preceding presents, 
just as éuvnudvevoay (33. 104. 216 Cosm.) to the influence of 
e€€Bnoav, which in turn was smoothed out into the usual NT 
term é€£7Afov (SNS DK LW 436. gtg. 1288. 1739). Mvypovevew 
here has the sense of “giving a thought to,” as in Jos. Azz. vi. 
37, UTE Tpodys éuvypovevaoev ovl’ Urvov, and below in v.22 Time 
(as Ac 24”), as elsewhere in Hebrews, rather than opportunity 
(1 Mac 15% qets d&¢ Karpov ExovTes avrexoucOa THs KAnpovopias 
Hpav Kal Tov TaTépwv nudv), is the idea of etyov dv Katpdv, Katpds 
taking an infinitive dvaxdpyar (so Codex A in Jg11°9 Kai dvexa- 
pwev mpos Tov rarépa airis, for the dréorpevev of B), as in Eurip. 
Rhesus, 10 (kaupos yap axotcat). 

Philo remarks of Abraham: rls & ovdx Av perarparduevos madwwdpduncev 


olkade, Bpaxéa pev ppovticas Trav wedhdovoedy é€dArrldwy, Ti dé wapovtoay aroplay 
orevowy éxpuyetv (de Abrahamo, 18). 


‘*Sometimes he wished his aims had been 
To gather gain like other men; 
Then thanked his God he’d traced his track 
Too far for wish to drag him back.” 
(THOMAS HARDY, 7he Two Men.) 


On the contrary (v.16), so far from that, they held on, the writer 


1Cp. Zest. Job xxxiili. (otrw Kayo aynodunv 7a éud, dvr’ obdévos mpds 
éxelvnv Thy wow wept is NeAdAnKEV pot O AyyeNos). 


176 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS _ [XI..16, 17. 


adds ; vv 8é (logical, as in 8°, not temporal) kpettrovos dpéyovtan, 
rouT é€otiv émoupaviou (so God is described in 2 Mac 3° as 6 rv 
Katotkiay éoupdviov €xwv). Ad obk étatoxdvetar (Compare 211) 
attods 6 beds “Beds” émkadetobar (epexegetic infinitive) “ adtay,” 
referring to Ex 3°, Eyo eiue . . . eds "ABpadu Kat Geds “Ioadk Kat 
Geos “IaxwB, which the writer! interprets (cp. Mk 127627) as an 
assurance of immortality. Their hope of a zarpis or heavenly 
home was no illusion; it was because God had such a ods 
(v.10) all ready for them that he could call himself their God. 
He might have been ashamed to call himself such, had he not 
made this provision for their needs and prepared this reward for 
their faith (yrotpacev, cp. Mt 23%*). 

The third phase of the faith of Abraham (vv.!7-!%) is now 
chronicled, followed by three instances of faith at the end of 
life, in Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph (vv.?0-22). 


17 Tt was by faith (riore), “when Abraham was put to the test, that he 
sacrificed Isaac” ; he was ready to sacrifice *‘ his only son,” although he had 
received the promises, % and had been told (rps bv, as 5°) that (87 recitative) 
“*3¢ ts through Isaac (not Ishmael) that your offspring shall be reckoned” — 
19 for he considered God was able even to raise men from the dead. Hence 
(8@ev, causal) he did get him back, by what was a parable of the resurrection. 
0 7¢t was by faith that Isaac blessed Jacob and Esau in connection with the 
future. Tt was by faith that, when Jacob was dying (aro0vicxwv), he 
blessed each of the sons of Joseph, ‘‘ bending in prayer over the head of his 
staf.” ™ Tt was by fatth that Joseph at his end (redevr&v only here) thought 
about the exodus of the sons of [srael, and gave orders about his own bones. 


The supreme test of Abraham’s ziorts is found in the story 
of Gn 221-18 which Jewish tradition always reckoned as the last 
and sorest of his ten trials (Pirke Adboth 5%). -It is cited in 
4 Mac 1618-20 as a classical example of tropovy (ddeirere wavra 
wovov wropevery Sua Tov Oedv, dv ov Kal 6 warp Huov "ABpadp 
éomevoev TOV eOvordaropa viov cpayidcat IoadK xtX.). In v.17 the 
perfect tense mpocevyvoxey may mean ‘‘the ideally accomplished 
sacrifice, as permanently recorded in scripture” (Moulton, so 
Diat. 2751); but it is more likely to be aoristic (cp. Simcox, 
Lang. of NT., pp. 104, 126). Metpafspevos echoes Gn 22! (6 
eds eretpaley tov ’ABpadm). Kai (epexegetic) tév povoyerq (a 
Lucan use of the term in the NT)? mpocéepev (conative imper- 
fect of interrupted action, like ékaAovv in Lk 159) 6 tas émayye- 
Alas dvadegduevos, z.e. the promises of a son, of a numerous line 
of descendants (v.!*), and of a blessing thus coming to all nations. 

1 Origen (od. ii. 17): meyddn yap Swped Tots marpidpyas 7d Tov Bedy avri 
dvéuaros mpordwat rhv éxelvwy dvouaclay TH >Oeds< ldig avrod mpooryopia. 

2The LXX of Gn 22? reads rév dyarnrév, but perhaps the writer of IIpds 
‘Efpatous read a text like that underlying Aquila (7dv movoyerA), Josephus 
(rov povoyery, Ant. i. 3. 1), and Symmachus (rév pdvov). Movoyerjs and 
d-yamrnrés, as applied to a son, tended to shade into one another. Philo reads 
ayamrnros Kal udvos (quod deus tmmut. 4, etc.). 


XI. 18, 19.] ABRAHAM AND ISAAC 177 


This is made explicit in v.18, with its quotation from Gn 21!%, 
For dvadéyouar in the sense of ‘‘secure,” see the line from 
Sophocles’ “ Ichneutae,” in Oxyrh. Papyrt, vil. 25 (dv BotBos tpiv 
ele x[ a |vedééaro). 

In v.19 Noytodwevos (as Ro 818 etc.) explains why he had the 
courage to sacrifice Isaac, although the action seemed certain to 
wreck the fulfilment of what God had promised him. He held 
dtu Kal éx vexpav éyetpew (weakened into éyetpar by A P, etc.) 
Suvatés (Dan 3)" ds éore Suvards e&eA€oOar Has KTA., and Ro 4?!) 
sc. €otw 6 Beds. Abraham, says Philo (de Abrahamo, 22), ravra 
noe Ged dvvara oxeddv e& ert omapydvwv Tovti 76 Séypa tpopabotea, 
Later (32) he speaks of this sacrifice as the most outstanding 
action in Abraham’s life—dédr/you yap d€m ddvar racas doat 
Geodircts trepBdAdXe. It was ‘a complicated and brilliant act of 
faith” (A. B. Davidson), for God seemed to contradict God, 
and the command ran counter to the highest human affection 
(Wis 10° copia... émt réxvov orAdyyxvois icxupov éepvAaéev). As 
Chrysostom put it, this was the special trial, ra yap rot Geod 
€d0Ket TOLs TOU Heod paxerOat, Kal Tictis éudyeTo TicTEL, Kal TpdC- 
taypa éerayyeXia. Hence (80ev, in return for this superb faith) 
éxopicato, he did recover him (kopileoOar, as in Gn 38” etc., of 
getting back what belongs to you),! in a way that prefigured the 
resurrection (kpeitrovos dvactdcews, v.*°), Such is the meaning 
of év tmapaBodq (cp. 99). Isaac’s restoration was to Abraham a 
sort? of resurrection (v.®4 ‘‘quaedam resurrectionis fuit species, 
quod subito liberatus fuit ex media morte,” Calvin). ’Ev zapa- 
Born has been taken sometimes in two other ways. (a) =apa- 
BorGs, te. beyond all expectation, almost zapaddgws, zap’ 
éA7rida(s), or in a desperate peril, as Polybius says of Hannibal 
(i. 23. 7, dveAriotws kat rapaBorws abros év TH oxddyn diépvye). 
This is at any rate less far-fetched than—(d) “whence he had 
originally got him, figuratively-speaking,” as if the allusion was 
to vevexpwpévov (in v.!2)! Against (2) is the fact that tapaBoAy 
never occurs in this sense. 


Augustine’s comment is (Czvzt, Dez, xvi. 32): ‘‘non haesitauit, quod sibi 
reddi poterat immolatus, qui dari potuit non speratus. Sic intellectum est 
et in epistula ad Hebraeos, et sic expositum [He 1117-19] , . . cuius simili- 
tudinem, nisi illius unde dicit apostolus: Qui proprio filio non pepercit, sed 
pro nobis omnibus tradidit eum?” He makes Isaac carrying the wood a type 
of Christ carrying his cross, and the ram caught in the thicket typical of 
Christ crowned with thorns. According to the later Jewish tradition (Pzrge 
R. Eliezer, 31), Isaac’s soul, which had left his body as his father’s sword 


1 Josephus (Ant, i. 13. 4) describes the father and son as map éAmidas 
éaurovs Kexomiopévot. Philo (de Josepho, 35, 7d kouloacGar Tov adedpdv) has 
the same usage. 

2 Aelian (Var. Hist. ili. 33) speaks of Satyrus the flautist, tpdaov twa 
Ti Téexvnv Exparrlfwv rapaBory TH pos pirocodlar. 

I2 


178 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS [XI..19-22. 


was falling, returned at the words, ‘‘ Lay not thy hand on the lad”; thus 
Abraham and Isaac ‘‘ learned that God would raise the dead.” 

The next three instances are of miotts as trdarucis éAmilopevuv, 
the hope being one to be realized in the destiny of the race 
(vy.20-22), 

The solitary instance of miotts in Isaac (v.29) is that men- 
tioned in Gn 2728: 29. 39. 40, q faith which (111) anticipated a future 
for his two sons. EdéAdyyoev, of one man blessing another, as in 
wif In kal mept peAddvtwv (sc. tpayydrwr), where pédAAew refers 
to a future in this world, the xaé simply! emphasizes zrepi peA- 
Advrwv edASyynoev, and the whole phrase goes with evAdyycer, 
not with wiore. The very fact that he blessed his two sons 
proved that he believed the divine promises to them would be 
realized in the future. The next two instances of faith are taken 
from death-beds ; it is faith, not in personal immortality, but in 
the continuance of the chosen race. In v.?! the writer quotes 
from Gn 473! Kat mpocexivycey ‘IopaiA eri TO axpov ths paBdou 
avrov, where the LXX by mistake has read nwan (staff) instead 
of m1 (bed), and the incident is loosely transferred to the later 


situation (Gn 48%), when Jacob blessed the two sons of Joseph. 
Supporting himself on? his staff, he bowed reverently before 
God, as he blessed the lads. (In the Ep. Barnabas 134, the 
writer interprets Jacob’s preference for the younger son as a 
proof that Christians, not Jews, were the real heirs of God’s 
blessing!) In v.** the argument draws upon Gn 507# 25 (Ex 
13%, Jos 24°2), where Joseph makes the Israelites swear to 
remove his remains from Egypt to the promised land, so con- 
fident was he that God’s promise to the people would one day 
be fulfilled. TeNeut@y (Gn 507° kai éreAcitycev “Iwonp) mepl tis 
é€sSou (only here in this sense in NT) tév vidy “lopany éprnpdveuce 
(called to mind, as v.15) xat wept tév édotéwy (uncontracted form 
as in LXX and Mt 232’, Lk 2499; cp. Cronert, Mem. Graeca 
fTercul, 166*) attoi évetetXato. Joseph’s faith also was shown in 
nis conviction of the future promised by God to Israel, but it 
found a practical expression in the instructions about conveying 
his mummy out of Egypt (Sir 4918 kat ra 607a adrod érerxernoayr). 

The ninth example of aiots is Moses, of whom almost as 
much is made as of Abraham. Five instances of faith are 
mentioned in connexion with his career (vy.?%-?9), 


3 Tt was by faith that Moses was ‘‘ hidden for three months” (rplunvor, 
sc. xpévov) after birth by his parents, because ‘‘ they saw” the child was 


1 To suggest that it means “‘even” is flat. for a blessing, ex hypothes?, 
referred to the future. Its omission (by * K L P, the eastern versions, etc.) 
is more easily explained than its insertion. J 

21 K 1% mpocexvvynocev 6 Bacided’s él Thy xoirny, ért has the same local 
sense, 


XI. 23, 24.] THE FAITH OF MOSES 179 


** beautiful” (Ac 7%), and had no fear of the royal decree. ™ Tt was by faith 
that Moses refused, ‘‘when he had grown up,” to be called the son of Pharaoh’s 
daughter; ™ tll-treatment with God’s people he preferred to the passing 
pleasures of sin, * considering obloguy with the messiah to be richer wealth 
than all Egypt's treasures—for he had an eye to the Reward. ™ It was by 
Jaith that he left Egypt, not from any fear of the king’s wrath; like one 
who saw the King Invisible, he never flinched. ™ It was by faith that he 
celebrated ‘‘ the passover” and performed the sprinkling by blood, so that ‘‘ the 
destroying angel” (cf. 1 Co 10") might not touch Israel's firstborn. ™ It was 
by faith that they crossed the Red Sea (Ac 7**) like dry land—and when the 
Egyptians attempted it, they were drowned. 


Moses (v.28) owed the preservation of his life as an infant to 
the courageous tiotis of his parents (matépwv=yoveis, parentes, 
like patres in Ovid’s Metam. 4°1, and Plato’s Leges, vi. 772 E, 
ayabdyv ratépwv pivrt). The writer quotes from Ex 2? 8, adding 
that, as the result of their faith, they had no fear of the royal 
edict (didrayua as in Jos. Ant. xvi. 16.5; Wis 11’ etc.). This is 
the main point of their iors. On doretov see Philo’s vit. Mos. 
1. 3: yevvnbeis odv 6 rats etOds ow evépaivev doreLoTépav 7) KaT 
iduirnv, ws kal Tov Tod TUpdvvov Kypvypatwr, ep cov oldv TE Hy, 
Tovs yovets dXoynoat). The Hebrew text makes the mother act 
alone, but the LXX gives the credit to both parents; and this 
tradition is followed by Philo and Josephus (Azz. ii. 9. 4), as by 
our author. 


The parents of Moses are the first anonymous people in the roll-call of 
faith’s representatives. Calvin rather severely ranks their faith on a lower 
level, because the parents of Moses were moved by the external appearance 
of their child, and because they ought to have brought him up themselves 
(‘‘notandum est fidem quae hic laudatur ualde fuisse imbecillam. Nam 
quum posthabito mortis suae metu Mosen deberent educare, eum exponunt. 
Patet igitur illorum fidem breui non tantum uacillasse sed fuisse collapsam”’). 
Still, he reflects that this is after all an encouragement, since it proves that 
even weak faith is not despised by God. Chrysostom’s comment is kinder ; 
the writer, he thinks, means to afford additional encouragement to his 
readers by adducing not only heroes, but commonplace people as examples 
of faith (d4ojuwr, dvwripwr),. 

Another (7?) gloss has been inserted here, after v.73, by D* 1827 and 
nearly all the MSS of the Latin versions, viz. lore: uéyas yevduevos Mwvoijs 
dveiev Tov Alytmrioy KaTravowyv Thy Tatelywow TV ddehpav avTov, a homi- 
letical application of Ex 21}? (used in Ac 7”), 


The second item of faith (v.”4) is the first individual proof by 
Moses himself. Josephus (4zzv. ii. 9. 7) makes Moses refuse the 
Pharaoh’s crown when a baby. The Pharaoh’s daughter placed 
the child in her father’s arms; he took it, pressed it to his 
bosom, and to please his daughter graciously put the crown upon 
its head. But the child threw it to the ground and stamped on 
it. Which seemed ominous to the king! The writer of Hebrews 
avoids such fancies, and simply summarizes Ex 2U*, where 
Moses peéyas yevdpevos (from Ex 2"; 2, as Calvin points out, 
when his refusal could not be set down to childish ignorance 


180 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS [XI. 24-26. 


of the world, nor to youthful impetuousness) jpyyoato (with 
infinitive as in Wis 1227 1616 1710) \éyeoBar vids Ouyatpss dapad. 
His religious motive in declining the title and position of son to 
an Egyptian princess (Jub 47°) is now given (v.?°); p@dov 
ES pevos (for the construction and idea, cp. OGJS. 66938 paddov 
77 TOV Tporepwv eTrapXwv aiwviov ea eae drr(dcocwv A<u> THY 
TpOTKALPOV TLVOS GOLKiaY pLEeLLnodpevosS) oUyKaKkouxEtoa. (a New 
compound, unknown to the LXX) 7@ ha@ Tod Geo 4 mpdckatpov (a 
non-LXX term! which first occurs in 4 Mac 157° 28, and passed 
into the early Christian vocabulary as an antithesis to aidvos) 
€xew Gpaptias dmddavow. The duaptia is the sin which he 
would have committed in proving disloyal to the People of God ; 
that might have been pleasant for the time being, but mlotts 
looks to higher and lasting issues (10%4 111). It would have 
been “sin” for him to choose a high political career at court, 
the “sin” of apostasy ; he did what others in their own way had 
done afterwards (10%, cp. 13°). 

For améXavors see Antipater of Tarsus (Stob. /Vorzleg. Ixvii. 25) : roy ao 
70eov <flo>, éfouolay d.ddvra mpos dkodaclay kal woki\ww Hoovev amddavow 
ayevvav Kal uikpoxapov, ideo voulfovrt, and 4 Mac 5° where the tyrant 
taunts the conscientious Jews, Kal tia dvénrov TovTo Td uh arodavery TWY xwpls 
éveldous 70eov. Philo (wrt, Mos. 6: vyevduevds re dtapepdvTws aoKyTiys 
ddAvyodeclas Kal roy aBpodiartov Boy ws ovdels Erepos xrevdous —Wux7 yap 
er bbe. pdvyn Fhv, ov Tw L.a7L) praises the asceticism of Moses in the palace 
of the Pharaoh, but gives an interpretation of his reward which is lower 
than that of our author; he declares (i. 27) that as Moses renounced the 
high position of authority which he cake have enjoy ed in Egypt (ére.dy yap 
Tiv Aly’mrov xaré\urev iyyepovlay, Ovyarptdobs Tov tére BacidevovTos wv), 
because he disapproved of the local injustice, God rewarded him with 
authority over a greater nation. 


In v.76 the reason for this renunciation of the world is 
explained. Metlova mdodtov hynodpevos (cp. v.!! and Aoyiodpevos 
in v.19) t&v Aiydtrou Onoaupav tov dveidtopdv tod Xprotod (as 
involved in ovykaxovxeicGat 7H Aa@ Tov Geov). This is one of 
the writer’s dinting phrases. There is a special obloquy in being 
connected with Christ. It is one of the things which Christians 
have to face to-day (131%), and, the writer argues, it has always 
been so; Moses himself, the leader of God’s people at the first, 
showed his ziors by deliberately meeting it. The obloquy was 
part of the human experience of Jesus himself (12? 13}2), but the 
point here in tév éve8topdv tod Xprotod is that, by identifying 
himself with God’s people in Egypt, Moses encountered the 
same dveiduopds as their very messiah afterwards was to endure. 
He thus faced what the writer, from his own standpoint, does 
not hesitate to call tov dveduocpov Tod Xprorod. Whether he had 
in mind anything further, eg. the idea that 6 Xprords here 
1 Tt recurs in an edict of Caracalla (215 A.D.), quoted by Mitteis- Wilcken, 
i, 2. 39. 


XI. 26, 27.| THE FAITH OF MOSES 181 


means the pre-incarnate Logos, as though a mystical sense 
like that of 1 Co 1o* underlay the words, is uncertain and 
rather unlikely, though the idea that Christ was suffering in the 
person of the Israelites, or that they represented him, might be 
regarded as justified by the language, eg., of Ps 89°! (rod dve- 
durpod Tov SovAwy cov... ov dveidicav TO dvtdAAaypa TOD Xpiotod 
gov). The experiences of ingratitude and insulting treatment 
which Moses suffered at the hands of Israel illustrate Chry- 
sostom’s definition of tov dvediuopov tod Xpirtod: Td wéxpe TéAOUS 
Kal eoxarns avamvons TarxELV KaKOS . . . TOUTO éoTLW dvELdiT HOS 
tov Xpiotod, Otay Tis Tap av evepyeret dvecdiCyrar (citing Mt 271°). 
The basis of this estimate of life is now given: daréBXetev yap eis 
tiv picOatodociay, as the writer desired his readers to do (10% 
11°), *Azofdérev eis is a common phrase for keeping one’s eye 
upon, having regard to, e.g. Theophrastus, il. 10, kai eis éxetvov 
amoBXerwv: Josephus, Bell. Jud. ii. 15. 1, 6 pev . . . eis povov Td 
AvouteRés 76 ek TOV GpTayav aroBX€rwv, TapyKovoev. Mr. Starkie, 
in his note on Arist. Acharn. 32, suggests that dmroBAderev, which 
is common in the comic poets and is also a philosophical term 
(e.g. Plato’s Phaedo, 115 C; Phaedrus, 234 D), “was used like 
‘to prescind’ in English,” ze. to fix one’s gaze on a single 
object by withdrawing it from everything else. 

The third act of faith in his life (v.2’) is his withdrawal from 
Egypt to Midian (Ex 2!f-=Ac 7%). In ph oBnOets tov Oupsr 
tod Baowkéws the author ignores the statement of the OT that 
Moses did fly from Egypt, in terror of being punished by the 
king for having murdered the Egyptian (opynv dwetAuxtov BactrAéws 
GTrOOLOpacKwy, Philo, de wit. Mos. 1. 9). Josephus in his own 
way also (Azz. 11, 10. 1) eliminates the motive of fear. Our 
author declares that if Moses did retreat from Egypt, it was 
from no fear of Pharaoh, but in the faith that God had a future 
and a mission for him still; he had as little fear of Pharaoh as 
his parents had had, tév yap ddpatoy (sc, BactAéa) ds bpav éxapté- 
pyoev (cp. Sir 2? evGuvov tiv kapdiav cov Kal Kaptrépyoov). “ The 
courage to abandon work on which one’s heart is set, and accept 
inaction cheerfully as the will of God, is of the rarest and highest 
kind, and can be created and sustained only by the clearest 
spiritual vision” (Peake). The language and thought are illus- 
trated by Epict. ii. 16. 45-46: é« rHs duavoias éxBadre . . . Adrny, 
pdBov, éeriOvpiav, POdvoy, émixaipexakiav, PiAapyvpiav, padaxiay, 
axpaciav. Tatra 0’ ovk éotw dAAws éxBadrety, ei po Tpds povov TOV 
Gedv aroBAérovta, éxeivw povw TpootemovOdra, Tos éxeivou TpoorT- 
dypact Kafwowwpéevov. The phrase os épav means the inward 
vision where, as Marcus Aurelius observes (x. 26), dp@pev, ovyi 
tois 6pOadpois, GAN’ ovy Wrrov éevapyas. In the de Mundo, 399a, 
God is described as doparos dv dAdw tA Aoytoud. Philo had 


182 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS [XI. 27, 28. 


already singled out this trait in Moses, Cg. de mutat. nomin. 2: 
Movojns 6 rHs devdods pioews Oearys kal Oedrrys—eis yap Tov 
yrodov paciv abrov ol Oetou xene pot eiceAOety (Ex 201), THY 
GOpartov Kal dO LATOV ovolav aivirTopevol. In vit. Mos. i. 1 5 he 
declares that the Pharaoh had no notion of any invisible God 
(uydéva 76 mapdmray vontov Oeov ew Tav dpardv vopicwv), and later 
on, commenting on Eexe2 og?! Ai. 28), he adds that Moses entered 
the darkness, rovtéotwy eis my ded Kal ddpatov Kal dordparov TOV 
GvTWY TapaderypaTiKnY ovolav, TA abéaTa pice OvyTy KaTavoay. 

On pi) poBnOeis tov Oupdy tod Bacthéws, it may be noted that 
the Stoics took the prudential line of arguing that one ought not 
needlessly to provoke a tyrant: “sapiens nunquam potentium 
iras provocabit, immo declinabit, non aliter quam in navigando 
procellam ” (Seneca, £7. xiv. 7). Various attempts have been 
made to explain away the contradiction between this statement 
and that of Ex 2!4. (a) Some think they are not irreconcilable ; 
‘so far as his life was concerned, he feared, but in a higher 
region he had no fear” (A. B. Davidson), ze. he was certain 
God would ultimately intervene to thwart Pharaoh, and so took 
precautions to save his own life in the interest of the cause. This 
is rather artificial, however, though maintained by some good 
critics like Linemann. (4) Or, the @vyzos may be not anger at 
the murder of the Egyptian, but the resentment of Moses’ action 
in refusing a court position and withdrawing from Egypt 
(Vaughan, Dods, Delitzsch, etc.). (c) A more favourite method 
is to deny that the writer is alluding to Ex 214-15 at all, and to 
refer the passage to’ the real Exodus later (so Calvin, Bleek, 
Westcott, Seeberg, and many other edd.); but this is to antici- 
pate v.28, and the Israelites were ordered out of Egypt by 
Pharaoh, not exposed to any anger of his. 

The fourth act of faith (v.28) is his obedience to the divine 
orders of Ex 12!2-48 (cp. Wis 185%), which proved that he be- 
lieved, in spite of appearances, that God had protection and a 
future for the People. Nerotnxey is another aoristic perfect ; mpdo- 
Xvous 1s not a LXX term, and Oiyyave (@tyn) only occurs in LXX 
in Ex 198 (=Heb 12”). As @tyyavw may take a genitive (12°) 
as well as an accusative, éAoOpevwv might go with mpwrdtoxa (Z.¢. 
of the Egyptians) and @iyn with atrév (the Israelites). Note the 
alliteration in miote. mem. tdoxa ... mpdcxuow. The tva py 
clause explains thv mpdcxuow Tod aiparos. 


By one Old Latin, or at any rate a non-Vulgate, text of this passage, in Codex 
Harleianus (ed. E. S. Buchanan, Sacred Latin Texts, i., 1912), a gloss is 
inserted at this point: ‘‘ fide praedaverunt Aegyptios exeuntes” (Ex 12%. 8), 
which was evidently known to Sedulius Scotus (Migne, ciii. 268 C), wie 
quotes it as ‘‘fide praedaverunt Aegyptios, quia crediderunt se iterum in 
Aegyptum non reversuros.” 


XI. 29-31. | THE FAITH OF ISRAEL 183 


The fifth act of faith (v.2°) is the crossing of the Red Sea 
(Ex 141%), Strictly speaking, this is an act of faith on the part 
of the Israelites; the 8€Bynoav depends on, for its subject, the 
attav of v.28. But those who crossed were ot éfe\Oovres é€ 
Aiytrrov 51a Mwicéws (31°), and the action is the direct sequel 
to that of v.78, though Moses is now included in the People. 84 
Enpas yijs is from Ex 1479; diaBaivew goes with the genitive as 
well as with the accusative. The Israelites took a risk, in 
obedience to God’s order, and so proved their miotts. But there 
are some things which are possible only to faith. “Hs (z.e. épvfpa 
Odrdacon) tetpav AaBdvres ot Atydmtio. KatemdOnoay (from Ex 154 
KateroOnoav ev épv0pa Oaraccn, B), z.e. the Egyptians tried it and 
were swallowed up in the sea. Here zeipay AapBavew is a 
classical phrase for (2) making an attempt, almost in the sense of 
testing or risking. They “ventured on” (cp. Dt 28° 7 tpudepa, 
Hs ovxl metpav éXaBev 6 wovs aitys Baivew eri THs ys), or tried 
it (cp. Jos. Ant. 8. 6. 5, codias Bovdropevn AaBeiv welpay, 
etc.). The other meaning is that (4) of getting experience (so 
in v.°6), which is often the sad result of (a); so, ¢.g., Demosth. 
in Aristocratem, 131, AaBov epyw THs éxeivov Pirias weipay, The 
writer ignores the legendary embroidery of Philo (wt. Mos. iii. 
345 Ws eri Enpas atparod Kat ALGwdous edhovs—éxpavpdOn yap 7 
Wdppos kal hn oropas aitns ovaia cuppdoa HvsOn). 

Two more instances of faith are specially cited, both in con- 
nexion with the fall of Jericho (vv. 31), During the interval 
between the Exodus and the entrance into Canaan the writer, we 
are not surprised to find (3!), notes not a single example of 
miotis, but it is remarkable that neither here nor below (v.°2!) is 
there any allusion to Joshua. 

0 Tt was by faith that the walls of Jericho collapsed, after being surrounded 
for only seven days. * It was by faith that Rahadb the harlot did not perish 
along with those who were disobedient, as she had welcomed the scouts 
peaceably, 

The faith that had enabled Israel to cross the Red Sea in 
safety enabled them years later to bring the walls of a city crash- 
ing to the ground (v.*), There was no siege of Jericho; Israel 
simply marched round it for a week, and that act of faith in 
God’s promise, against all probabilities, brought about the marvel. 
So the writer summarizes Jos 617°, Judas Maccabaeus and his 
men also appealed, in besieging a town, to Tov péyay Tov Kdopou 
Suvdorny, Tov atep Kpi@v Kal pnxavOv épyaviKav KatakxpynpvicavtTa 
tTHv leptxd Kata tovs Inood xpéovous (2 Mac 121°), and one Egyptian 
fanatic (for whom Paul was once mistaken, Acts 21°°) promised 
his adherents, in rebelling against the Romans, that the walls of 
Jerusalem would collapse at his word of command (Josephus, 
Ant. xx. 8. 6). 


184 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS [XI. 81, 82. 


The faith of a community is now followed by the faith of an 
individual. The last name on the special list is that of a 
foreigner, an unmarried woman, and a woman of loose morals 
(v.31), in striking contrast to Sara and the mother of Moses. 
The story is told in Jos 21?! 6%, For 4 mwépvy (“‘ Ratio haec sat R. 
solita sit peregrinos excipere,” Bengel) see below on 13% A 
tendency to whitewash her character appears in the addition of 
émteyonévyn (% syrbk! Ephr.), which is also inserted by some 
codices in the text of Clem. Rom. 121. Her practical faith 
(Ja 2%; Clem. Rom. 11? d:a wiorw Kat pidoseviav éo00n), shown 
by her friendly (wer eipnyns) welcome to the spies, which sprang 
from her conviction that the God of Israel was to be feared, saved 
(cuvatédeto, cp. Sir 85) her from the fate of her fellow-citizens 
(tots direvOnoaow) who declined to submit to the claims of Israel’s 
God. They are described by the same word as are the recalci- 
trant Israelites themselves (318). Even Jewish priests were 
proud to trace their descent from Rahab; her reputation 
stood high in later tradition, owing to the life which followed 
this initial act of faith (cp. Mt 15). 


For lack of space and time the writer now passes to a mere 
summary of subsequent examples of faith (vv.5!), Roughly 
speaking, we may say that vv.%% 4 describe what the folk of old 
did by faith, vv.°5" what they did for faith. 


32 4nd what more shall I say? Time would fail me to tell of Gideon, of 
Barak and Samson and Jephthah, of David and Samuel and the prophets— 
33 men who by faith (dia wicrews) conguered kingdoms, administered justice, 
obtained promises, shut the mouth of lions, *4 quenched the power of fire, 
escaped the edge of the sword, from weakness won to strength, proved valiant 
in warfare, and routed hosts ‘of ‘foreigners. 


Kat tt ért (om. D*) déyw (deliberative conjunctive) does not 
necessarily imply that Ipods “E@padous was originally a sermon or 
address ; it was a literary as well as an oratorical phrase. Thus 
Josephus uses a similar phrase in Amf?. xx. 11. 1 (kal ri del rAelw 
Aéyey ;). Faith did not die out, at the entry into Palestine. On 
the contrary, the proofs of faith are so rich in the later story of 
the People that the writer has no time for anything except a 
glowing abstract. “Emdeiper ydp pe Sinyoupevoy 6 xpdvos is one 
form of a common rhetorical phrase, though 77 7jépa is generally 
used instead of 6 xpévos. Three instances may be cited: Dion. 
Hal. De Compositione Verb. 4 (after running: over the names of a 
number of authors) kat dAXous pupious, @ ov dmrdvrov Ta Ovopara. €i 
Bovrotpnv éyerv, émireiWer pe 6 THs Tpepas Xpovos : Demosth. de 
Corona, 324, emidetipet pe NéyovO’ ) Huépa Ta TOV mpoddtwv dvdmara, 
and (out of several instances) Philo, de Sacrif. Abelis et Caint, 5, 
erirciver pe M Hepa A€yovta Ta TaY Kat Eidos dpeTav GvomaTa, 


XI. 32, 33. ] HEROES OF FAITH 185 


Aunyoupevoy . . . mepi, as, ¢g., In Plato’s Huth. 6 C, modAa 
mepi Tov Oeiwv Supyjoopuot, and Philo’s de Adbrak. 44, dv dArALywo 
mporepov éevia dueEnAOov (= “gone over”). For pe yap (8 A D* 
33- 547), yép me is rightly read by p18 D° K L P W Clem. Chrys. 
etc. (cp. Blass, § 475. 2), though ydép is omitted altogether by 
Ww 216*. Six names are specially mentioned, to begin with. 
Gideon’s crushing victory over the Ammonites echoes down later 
history (¢.g. Is 9? 1076, Ps 8311). The singling out of Barak is 
in line with the later Jewish tradition, which declined to think of 
him as a mere ally of Deborah; he was the real hero of the 
exploit. For example, some rabbis (cp. Targ. on Jg 528, Yalkut 
on Jg 42) gave him the high name of Michael, and praised this 
brave leader for his modesty in allowing Deborah to occupy so 
prominent a place. Later tradition also magnified Samson’s 
piety and divine characteristics (e.g. Sotah 92, 10a). Of all the 
four “judges” selected, Jephthah has the poorest reputation in 
Jewish tradition; he is censured for rashness, and his rank is 
comparatively insignificant. Augustine, however (Quaest. vil. 
xlix.), points out that the ‘‘spirit” came both on Jephthah (Jg 
112% 30) and on Gideon (877). Why these four names are put in 
this unchronological order (instead of Barak, Gideon, Jephthah, 
and Samson), it is impossible to guess; in 1 S 121! it is Gideon, 
Barak, Jephthah, and Samson, followed by Samuel. David here 
(AavetS te) belongs to the foregoing group, the only one of 
Israel’s kings mentioned in the list. In Jewish tradition (e.g. 
Josephus, Azf. vi. 2, 2-3) Samuel’s career was interpreted with 
quite martial fervour; he was credited with several victories over 
the Philistines. Hence he forms a transition between the 
previous heroes and the prophets, of which he was commonly 
regarded as the great leader (cp. Ac 34). "A\X\wov (+70v?) is 
superfluously inserted before wpopytav by syrb*! pesh arm eth sah 
boh 69. 1288 Theod. Dam. In ot 814 miotews (v.*%) the of covers 
vy.33 34, but 61a wiorews includes vv.*°-*8 as well, and is reiterated 
in v.39, The following nine terse clauses, devoid of a single xa‘, 
begin by noting military and civil achievements. In katnywvi- 
gavto BactNelas, Kataywvi¢ouar (not a LXX term) is the verb 
applied by Josephus to David’s conquests (in Axzé. vil. 2. 2, abrd 
caoa Karaywvicapevy Iladaoriworts dédwxey 6 Oeds); its later 
metaphorical use may be illustrated from Mart. Pol. 19? (d1a 
THS UTopovns KaTaywvicdmevos TOV adLKov apxovTa). *Hpydcayto 
Sixarogvyyny in the sense of 2 S 8! (kat éBacirevoey Aaveid eri 
"Iopanr* Kal jv Tov Kpipa Kai Sikawotvyv ért mdvta Tov Aaov 
avrov) etc., the writer applying to this specific activity, for which 
miotis was essential, a phrase elsewhere (cp. Ac ro*) used for a 
general moral life. Such was their faith, too, that they had pro- 
mises of God’s help realized in their experience ; this (cp. 6°) is 


186 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS [XI. 88-35. 


the force of éméruyov émayyedtav. Furthermore, éppagav ordpara 
Aedvtwy, as in the case of Daniel (Dn 61% 23 6 Geds pou evéedpagev 
7a oTopata Tov Acdvtwv, Theod.), éoBecav Sévapty tupds, as in the 
case of Daniel’s three friends (Dn 3!%28, 1 Mac 2°, 3 Mac 65). 
In épuyoy orépara paxaipys, the unusual plural of ordyua (cp. 
Lk 21% wecotvrat ordpatt paxaipns) may be due to the preceding 
oropara rhetorically; it means repeated cases of escape from 
imminent peril of murder rather than double-edged swords (41), 
escapes, ¢.g., like those of Elijah (1 K 19!) and Elisha (2 K 
614. 316) In euvapeOnoay (pls x* A D* 1831; the v2 éveduva- 
pobnoav was probably due to the influence of Ro 47°) dard 
doGeveias, the reference is quite general; Hezekiah’s recovery 
from illness is too narrow an instance.! The last three clauses 
are best illustrated by the story of the Maccabean struggle, 
where dAXdrpiou is the term used for the persecutors (1 Mac 27 
etc.), and awapeuBory for their hosts (1 Mac 3) etc.). In wapep- 
Bodds éxXway d&ddotpiwv, mapenBory, a word which Phrynichus 
calls devas Maxedovixdv, means a host in array (so often in 1 Mac 
and Polybius); xAivw (cp. Jos. Ant. xiv. 15. 4, KAiverau TO... 
Képas THS padayyos) is never used in this sense in the LXX. 

What the heroes and heroines of wiot1s had to endure is now 
summarized (vv.*5-88) : the passive rather than the active aspect 
of faith is emphasized. 


85 Some were given back to their womankind, raised from the very dead ; 
others were broken on the wheel, refusing to accept release, that they might 
obtain a better resurrection ; *® others, again, had to experience scoffs and 
scourging, aye, chains and imprisonment—* they were stoned... sawn in 
two, and cut to pieces; they had to roam about in sheepskins and goatskins, 
forlorn, oppressed, tll-treated * (men of whom the world was not worthy), 
wanderers in the desert and among hills, in caves and gullies. 


“EdaBov yuvatkes? «rd, (85) recalls such stories as 1 K 171% 
and 2 K 483" (kat 7 yuv7 . . . EXaBev tov vidv airs Kal e&prOev) ; 
it was a real dvdotacis, though not the real one, for some 
other male beings became literally and finally vexpot, relying by 
faith on a kpetoowy dvdotacts. “Addor S€ (like Sokrates in Athens: 
cp. Epict. iv. I. 164-165, Zwxpdaryns 8 aicypds ov owlerar... 
TOUTOV OUK EoTL THoat aicypds, GAN’ adrobvyncKwv cotera) could 
only have saved their lives by dishonourably giving up their 


1A more apt example is the nerving of Judith for her act of religious 
patriotism (cp. Rendel Harris, Szdelights on NT Research, 170f.), though 
there is a verbal parallel in the case of Samson (Jg 16% daréornoe am’ éuod 4 
loxvs wou Kal doGeviow). 

2 The odd v.72. yuvackas (p'® x* A D* 33. 1912) may be another case (cp. 
Thackeray, 149, for LXX parallels) of -as for -es as a nominative form ; as an 
accusative, it could only have the senseless meaning of ‘‘ marrying” 
(AauBdvew yuvaikas). Strong, early groups of textual authorities now and 
then preserve errors. 


XI. 35, 36. | MARTYRS OF FAITH 187 


convictions, and therefore chose to suffer. This is a plain refer- 
ence to the Maccabean martyrs. “Etupmavic@ycay (Blass prefers 
the more classical form in D* dzervpravicOncav), a punishment 
probably corresponding to the mediaeval penalty of being broken 
on the wheel. ‘“ This dreadful punishment consists,” says Scott 
in a note to the thirtieth chapter of Zhe Betrothed, ‘in the 
executioner, with a bar of iron, breaking the shoulder-bones, 
arms, thigh-bones and legs of the criminal, taking his alternate 
sides. ‘The punishment is concluded by a blow across the 
breast, called the coup de grace, because it removes the sufferer 
from his agony.” The victim was first stretched on a frame or 
block, the r¥umavov! (so schol. on Aristoph. Plu. 476, ripmava 
évAa ed ols eruprdavilov’ éypdvro yap tatty TH TYywwpia), and 
beaten to death, for which the verb was dmorvpravilecOar (e.g. 
Josephus, c. Apionem, i. 148, quoting Berossus, AaPopooodpxodos 

. br tév hidwv aretuuravicOn: Arist. Ret. il. 5. 14, do7rep ot 
arotupravicopevot, etc.). So Eleazar was put to death, because 
he refused to save his life by eating swine’s flesh (2 Mac 619 
6 d€ Tov per evxAcias Oavatov padrdov 7H Tov pera piaous Biov 
avadeEdpevos aiOaipéerws eri TO TUpmavov mpoonyev). It is this 
punishment of the Maccabean martyrs which the writer has in 
mind, as Theodoret already saw. ‘The sufferers were “ distracti 
quemadmodum corium in tympano distenditur” (Calvin); but 
the essence of the punishment was beating to death, as both 
Hesychius (zAnjoocerat, éxdepetar, ioxupos tvmrerat) and Suidas 
(EvAw TWAHoCETAL, exdépeTat, Kal Kpewatar) recognize in their defini- 
tion of tupavilerar. The hope of the resurrection, which 
sustained such martyrs 08 mpoodegdpevor (cp. 10°4) thy darokUTpwow, 
is illustrated by the tales of Maccabean martyrs, e.g. of Eleazar 
the scribe (2 Mac 62/£), urged to eat some pork iva rotro rpdéas 
azroAv6y Tov Gavarov, and declining in a fine stubbornness ; but 
specially of the heroic mother and her seven sons (¢did. 71), 
who perished confessing aiperov petadAAdooovtas aro avOpworwv 
Tas bro TOD Geod mpocdoKav éAmidas TaAWw avactyoeTOar bx’ airod 

. . ol pey yap viv nuerepor ddeAhot Bpaxdv érevéyKavres movov 
devdov Cwns tro SvadnKyny Geod rerTwKkacw. 

In v.°6 érepor S¢ (after of wey... GAXou dé in Matt 164) 
metpav €daBov (see on v.29) éumratypav (cp. Sir 2778 eumravypds Kat 
dvelourpos) Kat paotiywv—a hendiadys; the writer has in mind 
shameful tortures like those inflicted on the seven Maccabean 
brothers, as described in 2 Mac 7! (udori€w kal vevpats aixifo- 


1 Another word for the frame was tpoxdés, as in 4 Mac 9”, where the 
eldest of the seven famous Jewish brothers is beaten to death. Hence 
the verb used by Philo (2% Flaccum, 10) to describe the punishment inflicted 
on the Alexandrian Jews (Tovdato. wactiyovmevar, Kpeuduevor, Tpoxifduevor, 
Karatkifomevot). 


188 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS [XI. 36 


pevous .. . 7 Hyov ert Tov éeuratypov), although in this case the 
beating is not at once fatal, as the next words prove (éru ée 
dexpav Kat dvdAakys). The passage would be more clear and 
consecutive, however, if érepo. 8é preceded mepiAOov (in v.97), 
introducing the case of those who had not to suffer the martyrs’ 
death. This would leave épmatypév «rAd. as a reiteration or 
expansion of érupravicOyncav. Before Seopav kat udakis, ete dé 
probably (cp. Lk 142°) heightens the tone—not merely passing 
blows, but long durance vile: though the sense might be. simply, 
‘and further.” In v.37 é\v@do@yoav (as in the case of Zechariah, 
2 Ch 2470-22, Mt 23%5) was the traditional punishment which 
ended Jeremiah’s life in Egypt (Tertull. Scorp. 8) ; possibly the 
writer also had in mind the fate of Stephen (Acts 758). 
"Emplo@ncav (Am 1° éxpilov mpioow odypois xrA.) alludes to the 
tradition of Isaiah having being sawn in two with a wooden saw 
during the reign of Manasseh, a tradition echoed in the contem- 
porary Ascensio Isatae 51-14 (Justin’s Dial. cxx.; Tertull. de 
Pattentia, xiv. etc.); cp. R. H. Charles, Zhe Ascension of Isatah 
(1900), pp. xlv—xlix. 


After éAv@dc8noav there is a primitive corruption in the text. Four 
readings are to be noted. 

éreipdcOnoay, érpladncay: & L P 33. 326 syrbk!, 

érplaOnoay, éreipdobnoay: p*® A DW 6. 104. 1611. 1739 lat boh arm. 

éretpacOnoay : fuld, Clem. Thdt. 

érplo@yoav: 2. 327 syr’é Eus. etc. 

Origen apparently did not read ézeipdoOnoav, if we were to judge from 
Hom. Jerem. xv. 2 (dddov €X:GoBdrAncav, dArov Expicay, AXdov awéxrewav 
petagd TOU vaod Kal Tob Pvotacrnplov), but shortly before (xiv. 12) he quotes 
the passage verbally as follows: éAi@dc@ncav, érploOyoay, éreipdcOncav, év 
povy paxalpas aréPavov, though éreipdo@noav is omitted here by H. In 
c. Cels. vil. 7 it is doubtful whether ée:pdOnoav or éreipdo@noav was the 
original reading. Eusebius omits the word in Prep. Evang. xii. 10 (583d), 
reading €\:OacOnoav, érplodncav, év ddvw xrd., and sah reads ‘‘they were 
sawn, they were stoned, they died under the sword.” It is evident that 
érverpacOnoay (written insome MSS as émip.) as ‘‘ were tempted ” is impossible 
here ; the word either was due to dittography with érpic@noayv or represents a 
corruption of some term for torture. Various suggestions have been made, 
e.g. émnpwénoay (mutilated) by Tanaquil Faber, érpd@ncav (sold for slaves) 
by D. Heinsius, éoreipdcOnoav (strangled) by J. Alberti, or érépO@ynoav 
(impaled) by Knatchbull. But some word like érupé(dco)@nocav (Beza, F. 
Junius, etc.) or érpicAnoav (Gataker)! is more likely, since one of the seven 
Maccabean brothers was fried to death (2 Mac 74), and burning was a 
punishment otherwise for the Maccabeans (2 Mac 6), It is at any rate 
probable that the writer put three aorists ending in -c@yoav together. 


Death év dovm paxaipns (a LXX phrase) was not an un- 
common fate for unpopular prophets (1 K 19! Jer 2625); but 
the writer now passes, in wepiq\Oov x7A. (37-88), to the sufferings 


Or éverpyoOnoav, which is used by. Philo in describing the woes of the 
Alexandrian Jews (2 Flaccum, 20, f@vres ol wev éverpicOnoar). 


XI. 36-38. | THE PERSECUTED 189 


of the living, harried and hunted over the country. Not all the 
loyal were killed, yet the survivors had a miserable life of it, like 
Mattathias and his sons (1 Mac 278 éfvyov . . . eis Ta dpy), oF 
Judas Maccabaeus and his men, who had to take to the hills 
(2 Mac 527 év rots dpeow Onpiwy tpdrov diély abv rots per’ adrod, 
Kal THY XopTHdy Tpopyy orTovpevot SteréAovr), Or Others during the 
persecution (2 Mac 6! érepor 5¢ wAnoiov cuvdpapovtes eis Ta 
omyAaa). When the storm blew over, the Maccabeans recol- 
lected ds rHv TV oKnVaV EopTHy ev TOs Opec Kal ev TOLs oryAALoLS 
Onpiwv tpdorov Hoav veudpevor (2 Mac 10°), They roamed, the 
writer adds, dressed év pyndwrats (the rough garb of prophets, like 
Elijah, 1 K 19119), év aiyetous Séppacw (still rougher pelts). 
According to the Ascensio Lsaiae (27) the pious Jews who 
adhered to Isaiah when he withdrew from Manasseh’s idolatry 
in Jerusalem and sought the hills, were ‘all clothed in garments 
of hair, and were all prophets.” Clement (17!) extends the refer- 
ence too widely: oirwes év déppacw aiyeious Kal pndAwrtats mrept- 
watnoav Knpvaocortes THY eAevotv TOD Xpiorov" A€yomev dé "HAciav 
kat “EAwoaré, ere 5€ Kai “leLexiyA, Tovs mpodyras: mpos Tovrots Kat 
TOUS [ELAPTUPN[LEVOLS. 

A vivid modern description of people clad in goatskins occurs in Balzac’s 
Les Chouans (ch. i.): ‘‘ Ayant pour tout vétement une grande peau de chévre 
qui les couvrait depuis le col jusqu’aux genoux. . . . Les meches plates de 
leurs longs cheveux s’unissaient si habituellement aux poils de la peau de 
chévre et cachaient si complétement leurs visages baissés vers la terre, qu’on 
pouvait facilement prendre cette peau pour la leur, et confondre, a la premiére 
vue, les malheureux avec ces animaux dont les dépouilles leur servaient de 
vétement. Mais a travers les cheveux l’on voyait bientédt briller les yeux 
comme des gouttes de rosée dans une €paisse verdure ; et leurs regards, tout 
en annongant lintelligence humaine, causaient certainement plus de terreur 
que de plaisir.” 


Their general plight is described in three participles, botepov- 
pevor, OuBdpevor (2 Co 48), kaxovxodpevor (cp. 13°, and Plut. 
Consol. ad Apoll. 26, dote rpiv drwcacbat Ta TévOy KaKovXovMEVOUS 
teAXeutnoat Tov Piov). Kaxovyew only occurs twice in the LXX 
(1 K 276 1199 A), but is common in the papyri (e.g. Zedt. Pap. 
10422, B.c. 92). This ill-treatment at the hands of men, as if 
they were not considered fit to live (cp. Ac 22%), elicits a 
splendid aside—Gyv otk jv déos 6 Kéopos. Compare Mechilta, 
5a (on Ex 12°): ‘Israel possessed four commandments, of 
which the whole world was not worthy,” and the story of the 
bath gol in Sanhedr. 11. 1, which said, ‘‘One is here present 
who is worthy to have the Shekinah dwelling in him, but the 
world is not worthy of such.” Kéopos as in v.?; Philo’s list 
of the various meanings of kéapos (in de aetern. mundt, 2) does 
not include this semi-religious sense. Of the righteous, Wis 35 
remarks: 6 Geds éeipacev avtovs Kai etpey aitovs agiovs éavrod, 


190 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS [XI. 88-40. 


‘*There is a class of whom the world is always worthy and more than 
worthy: it is worthy of those who watch for, reproduce, exaggerate its foibles, 
who make themselves the very embodiment of its ruling passions, who shriek 
its catchwords, encourage its illusions, and flatter its fanaticisms. But it isa 
poor vé/e to play, and it never has been played by the men whose names 
stand for epochs in the march of history” (H. L. Stewart, Questzons of the 
Day in Philosophy and Psychology, 1912, p. 133). 


In °8> it was the not infrequent (cf. Mk 145) confusion of 
EN and ETT! in ancient texts which probably accounted for év 
being replaced by ézé (é¢’) in p!® & A P 33. 88, etc.; émé does 
not suit omndatous. . . dmats, and the writer would have avoided 
the hiatus in é7i épypias. Still, tAavdpevor suits only éonpiats Kal 
6peowv, and éwi may have been the original word, used loosely 
like wAavipevor with omydAaiows xrX. In Ps.-Sol 17!% the pious 
érAavavro év épjuots, cwOjva Woxas attdv amd Kaxov. For drats, 
cp. Ob 8 év rais drats tév wetpov. andaiov, like the Latin 
spelunca or specus, eventually became equivalent to a “‘ temple,” 
perhaps on account of the prominence of caves or grottoes in the 
worship of some cults. 

Now for an estimate of this zioris and its heroic representa- 
tives (vv.59 4°)! The epilogue seems to justify God by arguing 
that the apparent denial of any adequate reward to them is part 
of a larger divine purpose, which could only satisfy them after 
death. 

89 They all won their record (waprupndévres =éuaprupyOnoay in v.*) for 
faith, but the Promise they did not obtain, © God had something better in 
store for us (hu@v emphatic); he would not have them perfected apart 
from us. | 

Some of these heroes and heroines of faith had had God’s 
special promises fulfilled even in this life (eg. vv.1!: 8), but zhe 
Promise, in the sense of the messianic bliss with its eternal life 
(1086 87, cf. 617£), they could not win. Why? Not owing to 
any defect in their faith, nor to any fault in God, but on account 
of his far-reaching purpose in history; oto. mdvtes (again as in 
v.18, but this time summing up the whole list, vv.4%8) odx 
éxopicavto (in the sense of v.!* ux Kouicdpevor; not a voluntary 
renunciation, as Wetstein proposes to interpret it—‘‘non 
acceperunt felicitatem promissam huius vitae, imo deliberato 
consilio huic beneficio renunciaverunt et maluerunt affligi 
morique propter deum”) thy émayyediav (in v.18 the Promise was 
loosely called ai érayyeAda, and the plural ras érayyedias is 
therefore read here by A W 436. 1611). The reason for this is 
now given (v.4°) in a genitive absolute clause, tod Oe00 mepl hyay 
kpettrov Tt mpoBAepapevou (the middle for the active). ITpoSAérew 
only occurs once in the LXX (Ps 37}9 6 8 kvpios . . . mpoBrEéret 
Ore H&et 7 Hepa adrod), and only here in the NT, where the re- 
ligious idea makes it practically a Greek equivalent for providere. 


XI. 40.] THEY AND WE IQI 


Kpeirrov tu is explained by tva ph xwpis fpav teherwGouv, which 
does not mean that “our experience was necessary to complete 
their reward,” but that God in his good providence reserved the 
messianic teAeiwors of Jesus Christ until we could share it. This 
reXciwos is now theirs (9! 12”), as it is ours—if only we will show 
a like strenuous faith during the brief interval before the end. 
This is the thought of 12!*, catching up that of 10%, God 
deferred the coming of Christ, in order to let us share it (cp. 1 P 
110.20), his plan being to make room for us as well. The 
reXeiwots has been realized in Jesus; till he reappears (978 1012. 87) 
to complete the purpose of God for us, we must hold on in faith, 
heartened by the example of these earlier saints. Their faith 
was only granted a far-off vision of the hoped-for end. We have 
seen that end realized in Jesus; therefore, with so many more 
resources and with so short a time of strain, we ought to be 
nerved for our endurance by the sense of our noble predecessors. 
It is not that we experience xpetrrév tu by our immediate experi- 
ence of Christ (10!*), who fulfils to us what these former folk 
could not receive before his coming. This is true, but it is not 
exactly the point here. The xpetrrdy re is our inclusion in this 
People of God for whom the reActwors of Christ was destined, 
the privilege of the xpeirrwv diabyxyn. The writer does not go 
the length of saying that Christ suffered in the persons of these 
saints and heroes (as, ¢.g., Paulinus of Nola, 4zs¢. xxxviii. 3: 
‘ab initio saeculorum Christus in omnibus suis patitur ... in 
Abel occisus a fratre, in Noe irrisus a filio, in Abraham peregrin- 
atus, in Isaac oblatus, in Jacob famulatus, in Joseph venditus, 
in Moyse expositus et fugatus, in prophetis lapidatus et sectus, 
in apostolis terra marique iactatus, et multis ac uariis beatorum 
martyrum crucibus frequenter occisus”), and this consideration 
tells against the theory of a “mystical” sense in v.26. The con- 
clusion of the whole matter rather is (vv.5% 4°) that the reward of 
their faith had to be deferred till Christ arrived in our day. The 
reAeiwois is entirely wrought out through Christ, and wrought 
out for all. It covers all God’s People (cp. 1278), for now the 
Promise has been fulfilled to these earlier saints. But the writer 
significantly ignores any idea of their co-operation in our faith; 
we neither pray to them, nor they for us. Josephus interpreted 
the sacrifice of Isaac, as if Abraham reconciled himself to it by 
reflecting that his son would be a heavenly support to him (Azz. 
i. 13. 3, €kelvov, 2.€. Tov Oeod, THY WuxiVv THY OHV TpoTdexopevou 
Kal map aito KabéEovros’ ever TE pot eis KNdELOVa Kal ynpoKOMov 

. Tov Oedv avTi cavTod mapecynpévos). Such ideas lie outside 
the range of our epistle, and there is significance in the fact that 
the writer never touches them. 


I92 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS [ XI. 40-XII. 1. 


In Clement of Alexandria’s comment (Strom. iv. 16) on this passage, he 
quotes 10°89 (reading Seopots mov: éavrovs: xpoviet: dixatds pou), then 
hurries on to 11°*@-12? (reading éXOdoOnoav, éretpdoOnoar, ev povy pm. amé- 
Oavov: év épnulas: Thy érayyeNlav Tod Oeob), and adds: dzrodelrerar voeiv Td 
Kara wapacusrnow elpnudvov pdvor. émipéper yodv' rept hua Kpetrréy Tt 
mpoedouéevou Tod Oeod (dyabds yap Fv), va pn xwpls hudy TerXewwhdor. The 
collocation of tiv érayyedlav with rod Geod is a mistake. 


From the jpav ... fpav of the epilogue the writer now 
passes into a moving appeal to his readers (121*). 


1 Therefore (Tovyapofy, as in 1 Th 48), with all this host of witnesses 
encircling us, we (kal fuels, emphatic) mst strip off sin with tts clinging 
folds, to run our appointed course steadily (6 bmopovns), * our eyes fixed upon 
Jesus as the pioneer and the perfection of fatth—upon Jesus who, in order to 
reach his own appointed joy, steadily endured (bréwevev) the cross, thinking 
nothing of tts shame, and ts now “‘ seated at the right hand” of the throne of 
God. 


The writer now returns to the duty of trouovy as the im- 
mediate exercise of wioris (10°), the supreme inspiration being 
the example of Jesus (121°) as the great Believer, who shows us 
what true wiotis means, from beginning to end, in its heroic 
course (Tov mpoKeipevov Huty ayava). 


The general phraseology and idea of life as a strenuous dywv, in the 
Hellenic sense (see on 514), may be seen in many passages, ¢.2. Eurip. Ovest. 
846 f. : ) 

mpos & ’Apyetov olxerar New, 

Wuxjs ayava Tov mpoxeluevov Tépt 

ddowv, ev @ hv i) Oavety buds xpewr, 

Herod. viii. 102 (azodAods roddAdKs dy@vas Spauéovrar of “EAAnves) and ix. 60 
(d-yGvos weylorov mpoxermévou édevbépny elvar # dedov\wpyevyny Thy ‘EAAGSa), and 
especially in 4 Mac 14° mdyres (the seven martyrs), ®omep ém’ ddavaclas dddv 
Tpéxovres, Emi Tov did Tov Bacdyvwy Odvarov éomwevdoy, and Philo’s de migrat. 
A brah, 24, kal yap ‘ABpaap mirretoas ‘ éyylfew Oe” (Gn 18%, cp. He 11°) 
héyerat. é€av pévroe Topevduevos unre Kaun (cp. He 12%) pare pabuujoy, ws 
map éxdrepa éxtpamduevos (cp. He 12)%) rravdcbac ris péons kal evOurevots 
Siaaprav ddo0, pipnoduevos dé Tods ayabo’s Spouets 7d orddiov dmralorws 
avion Tod Blov, oreddvwv Kal GO\wv ératlwy revserat pds TO Tédos éOwy. 
The figure is elaborately worked out in 4 Mac 171-14 (a\0@s yap iv dyav 
Oetos 6 Ov abrav yeyevnuévos. OoPETEL yap Tore adperh Sv brromovys Soxiud- 
fovca’ Td vikos év dpOapola év Swy worvxpoviw. ’Heafap 5é rponywvrifero: 7 dé 
bjTnp TOv era raldwy évjOrer' of dé ddeA Hol Hywvifovro’ 6 Tupavvos avTnywvlfeTo* 
6 6é kdomos Kal 0 THv dvOpdrwy Bios éewper), Where the Maccabean martyrs are 
athletes of the true Law; but the imagery is more rhetorical and detailed 
than in I[pdés ‘ESpaious, where the author, with a passing touch of metaphor, 

suggests more simply and suggestively the same idea. 


"Exovtes . . . GroOdyevor . . . adopadytes, three participles 
with the verb after the second, as in Jude 2° #1; but here the first, 
not the second, denotes the motive. Tooodroy! (thrown forward, 
for emphasis) €xovtes trepike(pevoy hutv védos paptipwr. Maprupes 
here, in the light of 1124589, denotes those who have borhe 

1 Tydckovrov, x* W. 


XII. 1, 2. | THE CLOUD OF WITNESSES 193 


personal testimony to the faith. Heaven is now crowded with 
these (12?), and the record of their evidence and its reward enters 
into our experience. Such mvevpara dixaiwy rereherwpevwv speak 
to us (114) still; we are, or ought to be, conscious of their record, 
which is an encouragement to us (kal mets) ér éoydrov tay 
neepav Tovtwy (17), It is what we see in them, not what they 
see in us, that is the writer’s main point; zepixeipevov suggests 
that the idea of them as witnesses of our struggle (see the quot. 
from 4 Mac, above) is not to be excluded, but this is merely 
suggested, not developed. Mdédprus is already, as in Rev 2} 
etc., beginning to shade off into the red sense of “‘ martyr” (cp. 
Kattenbusch in Zeztsch. fiir neutest. Wissenschaft, 1903, pp. 111 f. ; 
G. Kriiger, zdzd., 1916, pp. 264f.; Reitzenstein in Hermes, 1917, 
pp. 442f., and H. Delehaye in Axalecta Bollandiana, 1921, pp. 
20 f.), though the writer uses the word with a special application 
here, not as usually of the Christian apostles nor of the prophets, 
but of the heroes and heroines of the People in pre-Christian 
ages. He does not even call Jesus Christ pdprvs (as does the 
author of the Johannine apocalypse). 

The meaning of ‘‘ witnesses of our ordeal” (z.e. spectators) is supported by 
passages like Epict. iv. 4. 31, ovdels dyav) diya OoptBou ylverat* moddovs Set 
Tpoyuuvacras elvat, moAdovs [Tovs] émixpavydfovras, roAXovs ervoTrdras, TOAAOUS 
deards, and particularly Longinus, de sud/im. xiv. 2, who, in arguing that many 
people catch their inspiration from others, notes: r@ yap dvTt péya Td 
aywvicua, ToovToy UroTidecOar Tay idiwy Adywr dikaoTHpiov Kal Oéarpor, Kal 
év TnXKoUTOLs Hpwot kpirats Te Kal wdprvow vréxe TOV ypadouevwy evOivas 
memaixOa. In Educational Aims and Methods (p. 28), Sir Joshua Fitch 
writes: ‘‘ There is a remarkable chapter in the Epistle to the Hebrews, in 
which the writer unfolds to his countrymen what is in fact a National Portrait 
Gallery, as he enumerates, one by one, the heroes and saints of the Jewish 
history, and adds to his catalogue these inspiring words . . . [He 11°?-*4], 
And, finally, he draws this conclusion from his long retrospect . . . [He 12!]. 
How much of the philosophy of history is condensed into that single sentence ! 
It is suggestive to us of the ethical purpose which should dominate all our 
historical teaching. To what end do we live in a country whose annals are 
enriched by the story of great talents, high endeavours and noble sacrifices, if 
we do not become more conscious of the possibilities of our own life, and 


more anxious to live worthily of the inheritance which has come down to 
us?” 


Nédos (never in this sense in LXX) has its usual Greek mean- 
ing of “host” (Latin nimbus or nubes), as, ¢g., in Herod. viii. 
109, véhos TocotTo avOpwrwv. In dykov dtobdpevor mdévtTa Kal Thy 
eUmepiotatoy dpaptiav, dyxov is thrown first for the sake of 
emphasis: ‘‘any encumbrance that handicaps us.” The conjec- 


1 The broader conception of the moral life as an athletic contest recurs in 
Epict. iii. 25. 1-3, cxéWar, Gv mpoéGov apyduevos, Tlywy wer éxpdryoas, tivwy F 
o} . . . od yap amroKkvnréov Tov ayava Tov péyioTov aywrifouevols, GANA Kal 
wANyas AnTréov’ ov yap Urép wadns Kal TayKparlov 6 dywv mpdxerrat . . . GAN 
vrép alras ebruxlas Kal evdaimorlas. 


13 


194 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS _ [XII. 1, 2. 


ture dxvov (P. Junius) is relevant, but superfluous; sloth is a 
hindrance, but the general sense of dyxos in this connexion is 
quite suitable. Compare Apul. Apologia, 19 (“etenim in 
omnibus ad vitae munia utendis quicquid aptam moderationem 
supergreditur, oneri potius quam usui exuberat”), and the evening 
prayer of the Therapeutae (Philo, w7¢. Contemp/. 3) to have their 
souls lightened from tod rév aic@jycewv Kal aicbytdv dyxov. 
"Oyxos had acquired in Greek literature the sense of pride, both 
bad and good, and it has been taken here (so sah= “having 
forsaken all pride”) as an equivalent for pride in the sense of 
conceit (fastus), as, ¢g., by Bengel and Seeberg. But what the 
readers seem to have been in danger of was not arrogance so 
much as a tendency to grow disheartened. ‘The metaphor is not 
“reducing our weight,” though dyxos had sometimes this associa- 
tion with fleshiness ; it refers to the weight of superfluous things, 
like clothes, which would hinder and handicap the runner. Let 
us strip for the race, says the writer. Put unmetaphorically, 
the thought is that no high end like miots is possible apart 
from a steady, unflinching resolve to do without certain things. 
What these encumbrances are the writer does not say (cp. 
1115. 25. 26); he implies that if people will set themselves to the 
course of faith in this difficult world, they will soon discover 
what hampers them. In kat thy edmepiotarov duaptiav, the article 
does not imply any specific sin like that of apostasy (v.*); it is 
daptia in general, any sin that might lead-to apostasy (e.g. v.19). 
The sense of edrepicraros can only be inferred from the context 
and from the analogy of similar compounds, for it appears to have 
been a verbal adjective coined by the writer; at any rate no in- 
stance of its use in earlier writers or in the papyri has been as 
yet discovered. As the phrase goes with dmo8éuevor, the intro- 
ductory xaé linking thy . . . dpaptiay with dyKov, etrepiotatos 
probably denotes something like “‘circumstans nos” (vg), from 
meplictavat (=cingere). The ed is in any case intensive. The- 
ophylact suggested “endangering” (8° iv edxdAws Tis eis Tept- 
oTdces éurimrer’ ovdev yap oUTW KLVOvVHdes Os duaptia), as though 
it were formed from zepiotracis (distress or misery). Taken 
passively, it might mean (a) “popular,” or (4) “easily avoided,” 
or (c) ‘‘easily contracted.” (a) mepicraros may mean what 
people gather round (repicraréw) to admire, as, ¢.g., in Isokrates, 
de Permut. 135 E, Oavparorotiais tais... tro tay dvonTwv 
mepior dr ous yevopevais, and evdrepiorarov would then = “right 
popular.” This is at any rate more relevant and pointed than 
(2), from Tepllo Tapa, which Chrysostom once suggested (ryv 
EVKOAWS TEPUTT OPEV IV eas 7 TV cdohus TeploTaciv duvapevny 
mabeiv: parXov de TodTo, padiov yap «av OeAwpev mepvyever Oar THs 
dyaptias), though wepicraros does mean ‘‘admired,” and drepi- 


XII.1,2.] DIFFICULTIES OF THE COURSE 195 


oraros is sometimes, by way of contrast, ‘‘unsupported.” On the 
other hand, dmepicraros may mean ‘‘unencumbered,” as in the 
contrast drawn by Maximus of Tyre (Diss. xx.) between the 
simple life (adaAoty Biov kat adrepictatroy Kal éAcvbepias é7PBoXov) 
and a life r@ odx atAG GAN advayxaiw Kal mepiotdcewv yémovTt. 
The former life he declares was that of the golden age, before 
men worried themselves with the encumbrances of civilization. 
In the light of this, edwepioratos might mean ‘which sorely 
hinders ” (z.e. active), a sense not very different from (vg) “ cir- 
cumstans nos,” or ‘‘which at all times is prepared for us” (syr). 
(c) is suggested by Theodoret, who rightly takes 4 dpuapria as 
generic, and defines eizepiotaroy as eikdAws ouvicTapevny TE Kal 
ywopevnv. Kal yap dpbarpos deAXealerar, axon KarabéArAyerar, ay 
yapyapilerat, kal yAd@ooa paota diodiobaiver, Kal 6 Aoyiopos mept 
70 xelpov G€vpporos. But “easily caught” is hardly tense enough 
for the context. Wetstein, harking back to wepioraros and zepi- 
oraois, connects the adjective with the idea of the heroic on- 
lookers. ‘‘Peccatum uestrum seu defectio a doctrina Christi 
non in occulto potest committi et latere ; non magis quam lapsus 
cursoris, sed conspicietur ab omnibus. Cogitate iterum, specta- 
tores adesse omnes illos heroas, quorum constantiam laudaui, 
quo animo uidebunt lapsum uestrum? qua fronte ante oculos 
ipsorum audebitis tale facinus committere?” But “open” or 
“conspicuous” is, again, too slight and light a sense. If any 
conjecture had to be accepted, edmepiotadtov would be the best. 
Cp. the schol. on Jad, ii. 183 (ao dé xAaivay Bare), yAatva 
Tetpaywvos xAapds 4 eis 6€0 Anyovoa aréPare SE aityv dd TO 
evrepiotaAtov. Hence Bentley’s note: ‘‘ Lego riv tép ixavoy 
draptiav . . . immo potius eizepiotaArov dazaptiav.” In Soph. 
Ajax, 821, the hero says of the sword on which he is about to 
fall, “I have fixed it in the ground, ed wepicretAas, right care- 
fully.” The verbal adjective would therefore mean, in this 
connexion, “ close-clinging,” while dzapriav (= burden) would be 
practically a synonym for dyxov. 

Tpéxwpev . . . dhopdvtes, for the motive-power in life comes 
from inward convictions. What inspires Christians to hold out 
and to endure is their vision of the unseen (cp. Herodian, v. 
6. 7,6 8 "Avrwvivos lee. . . &s TE TOV Oedyv aroBAéTwV Kal Tos 
xadwors avréxwv Tov int TacdV TE THY OOOV HYVE TPEXwV EuTaALY 
éavTod adopav te eis TO mpdcbev tov Oecd), as the writer has 
already shown (111%), Tév mpoketpevoy Hpiv dyava is built on the 
regular (p. 193) phrase for a course being set or assigned ; 0.8 
Lucian in de Mercede Conduct. II, gol 6€ 6 brep THs WuyAs ayov 
Kat trép amavtos Tov Biov Tore reece doxet: Plato’s Laches, 
182a, o0 yap aydvos aOAntat éopev Kal év ols jpiv 6 sl 
mpoxertat KTA., and Josephus, Axz. Vill. 12. 3, ot tpoKxeipevwv adrois 


196 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS [XII 1, 2. 


aOXwv, erav epi Te cTOVddT wo, Od SiadeirrovGL TEpL TOUT EvEpyovVTES. 
For &popartes eis (v.”), see Epictetus, il. 19, where the philosopher 
says he wishes to make his disciples free and happy, eis rov @eov 
aopavras év TavTl Kal piKp@ kat peydAw. An almost exact parallel 
occurs in the epitaph proposed by the author of 4 Mac (17?°) 
for the Maccabean martyrs, of kai efediknoav 7O éOvos eis Oeov 
apop@vTes Kal péxpt Oavdrov tas Bacdvous tropeivavtes. “Adopay 
implies the same concentrated! attention as dao Aérew (see on 
1176); “with no eyes for any one or anything except Jesus.” 
"Incotv comes at the end of the phrase, as in 2°, and especially 
3'; the terms rtév tis mlotews dpxnydv kat teherwryy describe 
him as the perfect exemplar of miotts in his earthly life (cp. 21%), 
as the supreme pioneer (dépxnyés as in 2!°, though here as the 
pioneer of personal faith, not as the author of our faith) and the 
perfect embodiment of faith (reXevwrys, a term apparently coined 
by the writer). He has realized faith to the full, from start to 
finish. TeXewwrns does not refer to reAcewHGow in 11493 it does 
not imply that Jesus “‘ perfects” our faith by fulfilling the divine 
promises. 

In ds dyti tis mpoKepevys atTO xapas, the yapa is the unselfish 
joy implied in 2° 9, “that fruit of his self-sacrifice which must be 
presupposed in order that the self-sacrifice should be a reason- 
able transaction. Self-sacrificing love does not sacrifice itself 
but for an end of gain to its object ; otherwise it would be folly. 
Does its esteeming as a reward that gain to those for whom it 
suffers, destroy its claim to being self-sacrifice? Nay, that which 
seals its character as self-sacrificing love is, that this to it is a 
satisfying reward” (M‘Leod Campbell, Zhe Nature of the Atone- 
ment, p. 23). As Epictetus bluntly put it, dy py ev td atta 7 
TO evoeBes Kal cupdépoyv, od Svvarat cwAhva To eiceBis &Y Tit 
(i. 27. 14). So, in the Odes of Solomon 315? Christ says: 


“They condemned me when I stood up... 
But I endured and held my peace, 
that I might not be moved by them. 
But I stood unshaken like a firm rock, 
that is beaten by the waves and endures. 
And I bore their bitterness for humility’s sake; 
that I might redeem my people and inherit it.” 


Hence dvi (as in v.!6 dvtt Bpdoews: cp. Plato’s Menex. 237 A, 
dvopas ayalovs érawovvtes, ot . . . THY TEeEUTHY ayTl THs Tov Lév- 
twv owtypias nAAdEavto) means, “to secure.” The sense of 


1 Epictetus, in his praise of Herakles (iii. 24), declares that his hero lived 
and worked with a firm faith in Zeus the Father. ‘* He considered that 
Zeus was his own father ; he called Zeus father, and did everything with his 
eyes fixed on Zeus (pos éxetvov dghopav érparrev & émrparrev).” 


XII. 2.] JOY AND SHAME 197 


mpoxepevns (cp. v.!) tells against the rendering of dvti . . . yapas 
as ‘‘instead of the joy which had been set before him,” as though 
the idea were that of 117-26, either the renunciation of his pre- 
incarnate bliss (so Wetstein, von Soden, Windisch, Goodspeed, 
etc., recently), or the renunciation of joy in the incarnate life (so 
Chrysostom, Calvin), z.e. the natural pleasure of avoiding the way 
of the cross. This is a Pauline idea (2 Co 89, Phil 2&7), which 
the writer might have entertained ; but (p. 1) he never hints at it 
elsewhere, and the other interpretation tallies with the idea of 
28-9, Inspired by this, Jesus émépewe (+76v, p!® D*) ctaupdv— 
as we might say in English “a cross.” Aristotle (Viz. Z7h. ix. 
I, 2) declares that courage is praiseworthy just because it involves 
pain, xaAerwrepov yap Ta AvTNpa bropéver H TA HO€wv améxer Oar: 
no doubt the end in view is pleasant (76 xara rHv avdpetay Tédos 
70v, cp. He 1214), but the end is not always visible. In aioxdvys 
katappovyoas it is not the horrible torture of the crucifixion, but 
its stinging indignity (cp. Gal 3!° for an even darker view), which 
is noted as a hard thing; it was a punishment for slaves and 
criminals, for men of whom the world felt it was well rid (cp. 
11°84), But Jesus did not allow either the dread or the experience 
of this to daunt him. He rose above ‘indignity and contumely, 
that is to say, all that would most touch that life which man has 
in the favour of man, and which strikes more deeply than 
physical infliction, because it goes deeper than the body—wound- 
ing the spirit” (M‘Leod Campbell, Zhe Mature of the Atonement, 
pp. 229, 230). Musonius (ed. Hense, x.) defined w@pus or aioxivy 
as olov AovdopyOjvat } TANyHVvaL H eumTvaOjva, Gv TO xaXerwTaToV 
mrynyat. But the special aicxdvy here is that of crucifixion. 
This, says the writer, Jesus did not allow to stand between him 
and loyalty to the will of God. It is one thing to be sensitive to 
disgrace and disparagement, another thing to let these hinder us 
from doing our duty. Jesus was sensitive to such emotions ; he 
felt disgrace keenly. But instead of allowing these feelings to 
cling to his mind, he rose above them. This is the force of kata- 
gpovyjoas here, as in the last clause of St. Philip of Neri’s well- 
known maxim, “Spernere mundum, spernere te ipsum, spernere 
te sperni.” It is the only place in the NT where xatadpovety is 
used in a good sense (true and false shame are noted in 
Sir 470-21 repi rns Wuyns cov py aloyvvOyjs* €or yap aicyivy émd- 
youra apaptiav, Kai éorw aicyivyn d0fa Kai xdpis). The climax is 
put in one of the writer’s favourite quotations from the psalter ; 
only this time he uses kexd@ixev (perfect here alone for the more 
usual aorist, 1° 8! 10!) =and so has entered on his xapa. 

Jesus thus had to suffer worse than anything you have had to 
bear; this is the thought of vv.*4, which round off the first 
movement of the appeal in 12}! :— 


198 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS  [XIL.8. 


8 Compare him who steadily endured (twopepevnndta) all that hostility 
[ram sinful men, so as to keep your own hearts from fainting and fatling. 
‘ You have not had to shed blood yet in the struggle against sin. 


The writer assumes, as in 5%f, a close knowledge of the 
Passion story. Before proceeding to argue that suffering is a 
fruitful discipline, with which God honours them (v.**), he re- 
minds them that as yet they have not had to face the worst (v.*). 
The metaphor of the race-course dies away into the general 
military metaphor of v.4, where duaprtia is half-personified as 
in 313, *Avadoyicacbe 1 (the yap is corroborative: “yes, dévaho- 
yioacbe ” xr.) is more than katavojoate (3!): “consider him and 
compare his treatment at the hands of these sinners (épaptwdday 
as in Mk 144!) with what you are called to suffer.” Totadtny echoes 
ataupov and aicxuvys, and is explained by péxpts atparos in the next 
verse, while Sropenevnndta is another aoristic perfect like cexaOcxev. 

"Avtidoylay is used here of active opposition, as in Ps 17* 
(pdoai pe e& dvtiAoyiv daod), where N* R read avriAoyias, and 
in the papyri (eg. Zedt. P. 138 [ii B.c.] avTiAoyuds pdxnv). 
Like the verb (cp. Jn 19!2, Ro 1o0!), the noun covers more than 
verbal opposition, as in Nu 2018 and Jude !! rH dvtiA0yia rod Kopé. 
The words eis adrév (or éavrov, A P syr™! etc.: in semetipsum, 
vg.) have no special emphasis; all the writer means to say is 
that Jesus himself, Jesus in his own person, had to encounter 
malevolent opposition. 


This is one of the places at which textual corruption began early. The 
curious v.t. éavrovs finds early support in x* D* (abrovs, pi? x° 33. 256. 1288. 
1319”. 1739. 2127 Lat syr’8 boh Orig.); p'® x* and D* go wrong here as in 
rie. D* and Lat asat 112 (insertion). iti is extremely unlikely that the read- 
ing arose from a recollection of passages like Nu 16%” (Korah, Dathan, and 
Abiram) arylacay Ta mupeca Tov dpapT wordy rovTwy év (2.é. at the cost of) rats 
puxats abrav, or Pr 8% oi de els ue duaprdvorres docBotow els ras Eavrav puxds. 
The notion that an evil-doer really injured himself was a commonplace (é.z. 
M. Aurel. 91 6 duaprdvwy éavr@ auapTdaver: 6 dducGv éaurov adtxet, the remark 
of Chrysippus quoted by Plutarch in de Stotc. repugn. xvi., ddixetobar bf 
é€auTov Tov ddtkodyTa Kal avroy ddixely, drav dddov abixy, Aristotle in Magn. 
Moral, 1196a, 6 dpa ratra uh rpdrrwy ddixetadrov, and Xen. Hellen. i. 7. 19, 
nuaprnkiras Ta méyiora els Geovs Te Kal buds av’rovs); Philo works it out in. 
quod deter. 15, 16. But there is no point in suggesting here, as this reading 
does, that the aduaprwdol were acting against their better selves, unconsciously 
injuring their own souls, as they maltreated Jesus. The writer deals with sin 
in a more straightforward and direct way, and, in spite of all arguments to the 
contrary (¢.g¢. by Westcott, von Soden, Seeberg, Peake, Wickham), this 
seems a far-fetched idea here. It is like the similar interpretation of éavrous 
in 10%4, a piece of irrelevant embroidery ; it “looks like the conceit which 
some reader wrote upon his margin” (A. B. Davidson). Theodoret took els 
éavrovs with dvadoyicacbe=‘‘think to yourselves.” Which is not natural, 
though the Ethiopic version follows this interpretation. In some early 
versions (¢.g. sah arm) neither els éavréy nor els éavrovs seems to be implied. 


1’ Avadoylfouat, though not a LXX term, begins to be used in Hellenistic 
Judaism (e.g. Ps.-Sol 87 cveXoyiodunv ra Kpluara 790 Oeod) in a religious sense. 


XII. 3, 4.] A ROUSING REMINDER 199 


In tva . . . ekdudpevor, exAvdpevor (ekAeAvpevor p!8 D*) might 
go with rats Wvyais tov (cp. Polybius, xx. 4. 7, od povoy rots 
THpacw eeAvOnoay, GANG Kal tats Wxats), as readily as xdpnre 
(cp. Job 10! kdéyyw dé TH Wy pov). Both verbs connect with 
it, to express the general sense of inward exhaustion and faint- 
heartedness ; indeed, Aristotle uses both to describe runners 
relaxing and collapsing, once the goal has been passed: ézi rots 
kapmTnpow (at the goal of the race, not till then) éxavéover kal 
€xAvovTa’ mpoopavTes yap TO mépas ov Kapvovor mpdtepov (Lhet. 
ili. 9. 2). In v.4 oUmw (ydp is superfluously added by DL 440. 
491. 823 arm sah boh) xrA. does not necessarily imply that they 
would be called upon to shed their blood in loyalty to their 
faith, as if martyrdom was the inevitable result of tenacity. Nor 
is the writer blaming them; he does not mean to suggest that if 
they had been truly decided for God against the world, they 
would by this time have suffered péxpis aipatos. He is shaming 
them, not blaming them. ‘ Your sufferings have been serious and 
sharp (10%), but nothing to what others before you, and especi- 
ally Jesus, have had to bear. Will you give way under a lesser 
strain than theirs?” The coming of the messiah was to be 
heralded by birth-pangs of trouble for his adherents on earth, 
and it might be supposed that the writer implies here: “ The 
Coming One (10?") is near (127°), as is evident from your woes ; 
do not fail, but be ready for him.” But this line of thought is 
not worked out elsewhere by the writer, and is not necessary to 
his argument at this point. To fight péxpis aiuaros is to resist 
to the death; cp. the cry of Judas Maccabaeus to his troops 
(2 Mac 13}4), aywvicacbat péxpt Gavdtov. Meéypis aiwaros has the 
same meaning of a mortal combat, e.g. in Heliod. vii. 8, ris 
PEXPLS Aiparos OTATEWS. 

Note another case of rhetorical alliteration in atu. dyrix. . . . apapr. 
dvraywrigduevor (cp. Clem. Hom. iv. 5, mpos tocavrny diva dyraywvil- 
gac@at), and the use of dvraywrigéobar above (v.’) in the quot. from 4 Mac. 

The connexion of thought in vv.5* is: God has not yet asked 
from you the supreme sacrifice (v.*), and, besides (vv.5"), any 
demand he makes upon your courage is in your highest 
interests. 

i ius have you forgotten the word of appeal that reasons with you as 
SONS §— 


** My son, never make light of the Lord’s discipline, 
never faint (éxdvov) under his reproofs ; 

8 for the Lord disciplines the man he loves, 
and scourges every son he receives.’ 


1 It ts for discipline that you have to endure. God ts treating you as sons ; 
for where ts the son who is not disciplined by hts father? *® Disctpline ts the 
portion (pwér oxo yeyévact, as 314) of all; tf you get no discipline, then you are 
not sons, but bastards. * Why, we had fathers of our flesh to discipline us, 


200 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS [ XII. 5. 


and we yielded to them! Shall we not far more submit to the Father of our 
sptrits, and so live? © For while thetr discipline was only for a time, and 
inflicted at their pleasure, he disciplines us for our good, that we may share in 
his own holiness. ™ Discipline always seems for the time to be a thing of 
pain, not of joy ; but those who are trained by tt reap the fruit of tt afterwards 
in the peace of an upright life. 

With the interrogative kat ékdé\nobe «rr. (v.5) the writer 
opens his next argument and appeal. All such too means 
a divine ra:Seta or moral training, which we have the honour of 
receiving from God. Instead of adducing the example of Jesus, 
however (see on 57-8), he quotes from the book of Proverbs 
(vv.5- 6), and then applies the general idea (vv.71!). “Exdav6a- 
veo$a (not a LXX term) in v.5 is slightly stronger than the more 
common émAavOdver$a, though it may be rhetorically chosen 
for the sake of assonance after éxkAvopevor. The rapdaxAynots is 
personified rhetorically ; “Htis (2°) 6piv (for the scripture applies 
to all believers) &s utots Suadkd€yetar. It is the wapdxAnors of 
God, who speaks as a father to his son (vié wov), though in the 
original “son” is merely the pupil of the sage (personifying 
the divine wisdom). ILapdkAyou in Alexandrian Judaism ‘is 
the regular term for ‘an appeal’ to an individual to rise to the 
higher life of philosophy” (Conybeare’s ed. of Philo’s de vit. 
Contempl., p. 201). The quotation is from Pr 3! !2 (A): 


es ‘\ > , 5 / / 
vie, fy OALywper wraldetas Kvuptov, 
\ > , ers 3 na, 3 / 2 z 
poe éxAvov tr attod édeyxopevos 
dv yap ayama Kupios moudever (éX€yxer, B) 
A / e 
pactiyot O€ mavra viov dv mapadéxerau. 


After uté, pou is added (except by D* 31 Old Latin, Clem.), but 
otherwise the citation is word for word. Philo (De Congressu. 
Erud. 31) quotes the same passage to prove that discipline and 
hardship are profitable for the soul (otrws dpa 7 émimAngis kai 
vovlecia Kaddov vevopicrat, dote du airns  mpos Gedy Spodroyia 
ovyyéveta yiverat. ri yap oixedrepov vid rarpos 7) viod rarpi;). The 
LXX contains a double mistranslation. (a) It is at least doubt- 
ful if the Hebrew text of the second line means “be not weary 
of”; the alternative is a parallel to the first line, “scorn not.” 
(4) It is certain that the second line of v.® originally ran, “he 
afflicts the man in whom he delights,” or ‘and delights in him as 
a father in his son.” Our writer, following the free LXX version, 
notes the twofold attitude of men under hardship. They may 
determine to get through it and get over it, as if it had no 
relation to God, seeing nothing of him in it. Stronger natures 
take this line; they summon up a stoical courage, which dares 
the world to do its worst to them. This is dAvywpetv madeias 
Kupiou. It ignores any divine meaning in the rough experience. 
Other natures collapse weakly (ék\vew); they see God in the 


>. @ 8 © 5-7. | PROVIDENCE AND ENDURANCE 201 


trial, but he seems too hard upon them, and they break down 
in self-pity, as if they were victims of an unkind providence. 
"EXeyxdpevos . . . madeder is used, as in Rev 319 (é6c0us éay 
pro eheyxo Kal maidevw), of pointing out and correcting faults ; 
pactryot, as in Judith 827 (eis vovdérnow pactryot Kvpwos rots 
éyyilovras ard) and often elsewhere ; mapaséxerat, in the sense 
of Lk 15%. In fact, the temper inculcated. in this passage 
resembles that of Ps.-Sol 161! where the writer prays: 


\ \ 93 4 > / 4 byl weak A 
yoyyvapov Kat dAtyouxiav év Odiver paxpuvov am épuov, 
€dv dpapTjow ev TO oe Taidevew els emioTpopyV... 
év TO eAeyxerOar Wryxiv ev xelpl Gampias aitns... 

A al , ¢ ‘ , 
év TO Dropetvat dikarov év TovTos eAenOynoeTat bro Kuplov. 


In eis madelay Smopévere (v.”), with which the writer begins his 
application of the text, the vigour is lost by the change of eis 
into ef (in a group of late cursives, including 5. 35. 203. 226°. 
241. 242. 257. 337. 378 383. 487. 506. 547. 623. 794. 917. 1319. 
1831. 1891. 1898. 2127. 2143 + Theophyl.), and wtmopevere is 
indicative, not imperative.t To endure rightly, one must endure 
intelligently ; there is a reason for it in God’s relations with us 
(Gs utots Sptv mpoodépetar). Mpoodéeperar (cp. Syll. B7 TS SIFALD) 
is a non-biblical Greek term for “treating” or “handling” 
(“‘tractare, agere cum”); cp. Sy. 371 1 A.D., and Latyschev’s 
Inscript. Antig. Orae Septentrionalis, 1 2228 ois pev WAuKuoTas 
mporpepopevos ws adeAdds . . . Tos dé ratclv ws Tarp); Tis goes 
with vids, as in Mt 79 (ris éorw e& tpov avOpwros) etc., and éorw 
after vids is rightly omitted by x* A P W 104. 256 vg sah Origen. 

A mood of bitter scepticism about the discipline of provi- 
dence recurs in some contemporary Roman writers ; both Lucan 
(Pharsalia, iv. 807 f., “ Felix Roma quidem, civesque habitura 
beatos, | si libertatis superis tam cura placeret | quam uindicta 
placet ») and Tacitus (//7s¢. i. 3, “nec enim umquam atroci- 
oribus populi Romani cladibus magisve iustis indiciis adprobatum 
est non esse curae deis securitatem nostram, esse ultionem ”) 
speak as if the gods showed an unpaternal vindictiveness. But 
the idea of a fatherly providence was far-spread, both within and 
without Judaism. When our author argues: ‘You think that 
if God were fatherly, he would spare you these hardships? On 
the contrary, they are the proof of his wise affection”-—he is not 
far from Seneca’s position (in the de Providentia, iv. 7): ‘hos 
itaque deus quos probat, quos amat, indurat recognoscit, 
exercet.” And in 2 Mac 6 the author bids his readers re- 


1D takes els maidelav with the foregoing mapadéyerat, as Hofmann does 
with pacriyot. This leaves trouévere (Urouelvare D) in quite an effective 
opening position for the next sentence ; but it is not the writer’s habit to end 
a quotation with some outside phrase. 


202 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS [XII.7, 8. 


member TOS {TuyLwpias pm mpos dAcOpov, GAAA pds waidiay Tod 
yévous Hav etva. According to Sanhedr. rora (cp. Sifre, Deut. 
32), Rabbi Akiba comforted R. Eliezer on his sick- bed by 
explaining to him that “‘chastisements are precious,” whereas 
the other three rabbis who accompanied him had only praised the 
sick man for his piety. There is a fine passage in Philo’s guod 
deter. potiort insid. soleat, 39-40, where he argues that discipline 
ny God’s hands is better than being left to oneself in sin and 
folly ; edruxéorepor O€ Kal Kpeitrovs Tov averiTpoTrevTwv Vvéwv ot 
pdduora pev ériotacias Kal dpyns akwlhévres proxys, nv ot yevv7- 
gavres émi Tékvois KexAnpwvTar . . . ixerevwuev ovv Tov Gedy ot 
guveidoyoer TaV oikelwy GdiKnuaTwv éA€eyxdpmevot, KOAdoAaL Huas 
uaAXov 7) mapetvar. Similarly, in de sacrificantibus, 11, he writes 
of parental care, human and divine, apropos of Deut 14} (vioi 
éore kupiw TO Ged tudv) SnArovdte mpovoias Kat Kydepovias a€uohy- 
oopevot THs ws €Kk mar pos’ 7 dé émipédXera Torovrov dioica THS ar 
dvOpworwv 6 Omovrep, oluat, Kal 6 érrrehovpevos Srapéper, Compare 
M. Aur. 1. 17, 70 dpxovte kat marpi trotaxOnvat, Os EueArXe tavra 
Tov Tdpov apaipyoey pov (cp. v. 31). When the king asks, in 
the ZLpist. Arist. 248, what is the supreme instance of neglect 
(apédeva), the Jew answers, el Téxvwv dgpovris Tis ein, KaL poy KaTa 
TavTa TpoToVv dyaryetv prensa .. TO O€ émidetobar madeiav 
" cwppootrys petacyxetv, Jeod dvvdpet TovTO yivera. } 


Jerome writes in his letter (Zfzs¢. xxii. 39) to Eustochium: ‘‘haec est 
sola retributio, cum sanguis sanguine conpensatur et redempti cruore Christi 
pro redemptore libenter occumbimus. quis sanctorum sine certamine corona- 
tus est? Abel justus occiditur; Abraham uxorem periclitatur amittere, et, 
ne in inmensum uolumen extendam, quaere et invenies singulos diuersa per- 
pessos. solus in deliciis Salomon fuit et forsitan ideo corruit. quem enim 
diligit dominus, corripit ; castigat autem omnem filium, quem recipit. "te 
often quotes this verse (8) in his letters of counsel and warning. Thus in 
Ixviii. 1 he prefixes it with the remark, ‘‘ magna ira est, quando peccantibus 
non irascitur deus.” The modern parallel would be Browning’s hero in 
Christmas-Eve and Easter-Day (pt. 2, xxxiii.), who is 


‘happy that I can 
Be crossed and thwarted as a man, 
Not left in God’s contempt apart, 
With ghastly smooth life.” 


In v.8 mdvtes (sc. viot yvyovor) recalls mdévta uidy (v.5). Nodbor 
are children born out of wedlock, who are left to themselves ; 
the father is not sufficiently interested in them to inflict on 
them the discipline that fits his legitimate children for their 
place in the home. Nédos (not a LXX term) seems to mean 
born of mixed marriages, in Wis 4° (cp. Aristoph. Birds, 1650— 
1652, vdOos yap et Kov yvyowos . . . dv ye Sévys yuvatxds). So Philo 
compares polytheists and lovers of material pleasure to rv ék’ 
mopvns aroxunGevtwv (de Confus. ling. 28), as distinguished from 


XII. 8-10.} FATHERS AND THE FATHER 203 


the sons of God. The double éore (not 77e) makes the sentence 
more vivid ; the writer supposes an actual case. In vv.% 1 the 
writer simply develops this idea of maSela, comparing the 
human and the divine methods. Hence ¢fra cannot mean here 
“further” (deinde) ; it is ‘‘ besides,” in the sense that it brings 
out another element in the conception. 

Etra might be taken interrogatively (=itane or siccine), to introduce 
an animated question (as often in Plato, e.g. Leges, 9646, Theat. 207d, 
Sophist. 2226), though we should expect a '8é in the second clause here or a 
kal before ov moAd paddAov. Kypke suggests that elra=el dé (quodsi) as, 
é.g.,in Jos. B./. iii. 8. 5, ef7 av per ddavioy tis avOpwrov TrapakaTabyKny, 
H OcdOnra cakes. 


NatSeurns only occurs once in the LXX, and there as a de- 
scription of God (Hos 5? éya 6 radeuvris tudv); in 4 Mac 9% 
(6 madevrys yépwv) it is applied to a man, as in Ro 27, Kat 
éverperrou.e0a, (“‘reverebamur,” vg), we submitted respectfully to 
them (the object of the verb being matépas), as in Mt 21%”, not, 
we amended our ways (as in LXX, eg. 2 Ch 7!* and Philo’s 
quaest. in Gen. 49 76 pn apaptavev pydev TO wapapéyiorov ayabov' 
TO dpaptavovra evtparnva: cvyyéves éxeivov). In o8 todd paddor, 
the more common moAh@ is read by D° K L, and after zodv a 
few authorities (p!? x° D* 1739 Origen) supply the dé which is 
strictly required after the preceding pev. ‘The description of - 
God as T@ watpi Tay mveupdtwy is unexpected. In the vocabulary 
of Hellenistic Judaism God is called 6 rév rvevpdtwr Kal réons 
efovatas duvdorys (2 Mac 3”), and “ Lord of spirits ’ is a favourite 
Enochic title; but “spirits” here cannot mean angels (cp. Nu 
16*2), The contrast between tols tis capkds twatépas and 76 
tatpt Tov mveundtwy denotes God as the author of man’s spiritual 
being; the expression is quite intelligible as a statement of 
practical religion, and is only rendered ambiguous when we read 
into it later ideas about traducianism and creationism, which 
were not in the writer’s mind. Shall we not submit to Him, the 
writer asks, kat {ycoper (cp. 10°8 fyjcerat) ? ‘‘ Monemur hoc verbo 
nihil esse nobis magis exitiale quam si nos in Dei obsequium 
tradere recusemus” (Calvin). In v.!® the assumption that the 
readers were mature men (eixopey, v.%) is made explicit by mpés 
dAtyas hpepas (till we became men). LIIpds here, as in Wis 168 
(cis voveciav d€ rpds dAiyov érapayOnoav) etc., means duration ; 
it is not final, as if the parental discipline were with a view to 
the short, earthly life alone. Katad 15 Soxodv adtots (as they 
chose) refers to the arbitrariness of the patria potestas. “‘ Parents 
may err, but he is wise,” as the Scottish metrical paraphrase 
puts it. 


The writer has in mind the familiar Jatrza potestas of the Romans, as in 
Terence’s Heauton Timoroumenos (100: ‘‘vi et via pervolgata patrum” 


204 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS [ XII. 10. 


204-207: ‘‘parentum iniuriae unius modi sunt ferme . . . atque haec sunt 
tamen ad virtutem omnia’’), where one father is confessing to another how he 
had mishandled his boy (99f.: ‘‘ubi rem rescivi, coepi non humanitus neque 
ut animum decuit aegrotum adulescentuli tractare ”). Compare the remark 
of the Persian officer in Xenophon’s Cyropaedza (ii. 2. 14), who argued that a 
man who set himself to make people laugh did less for them than a man who 
made them weep, and instanced fathers—kdavuaor pév ye kal marépes viots 
swdpoctvnv unxavavrat. This is wholesome correction. But it was not 
always so. ‘‘Qur postremo filio suscenseam, patres ut faciunt ceteri?” old 
Demaenetus asks, in the Aszvzaria (49) of Plautus. Ovid’s ‘‘durus pater” 
(Amores, i. 15. 17) was more than a tradition of literature. Pliny tells us, 
for example, that he had once to remonstrate with a man who was thrashing 
his son for wasting money on horses and dogs (Z//. ix. 12): ‘‘haec tibi 
admonitus immodicae seueritatis exemplo pro amore mutuo scripsi, ne 
quando tu quoque filium tuum acerbius duriusque tractares.” There is also 
the story told by Aelian (Var. Ast. ix. 33) about the youth who, when asked 
by his father what he had learned from Zeno, was thrashed for failing to 
show anything definite, and then calmly replied that he had learned stoically 
to put up with a father’s bad temper (@67 meuabynxévar péperv dpyhv rarépwv 
kal uh ayavaxretvy). Sons, says Dio Chrysostom (xv. 240 M), rpédovrat 
mares bd TOV Tarépwv Kal walovrac wédAaKis Uw’ ad’r@v. The general point 
of view is put by Epictetus (Enchiridion, 30, warnp éorw* bmaryopeverat 
émipedeta bat, TO,pax wpety aTaVTWY, avéxec0at ocdopotvros, matovros), and the 
connexion of *‘ life”? with madela in Pr 4° éridaBod éufjs wadeias, uh ads, 
GAA PvAasov avray ceauTy@ els Swhv cov: Pr 63 Adxvos évToA} vouou Kal Pas, 
Kal odds fwijs kal éXeyxos Kal macdeia, and Sir 4)", 


Now for the contrast. ‘Oo 8€ (God; sc. wawWever nuds) emt 78 
oup.dépov (cp. TiCOMgl 20 pet ristapees: op Bovdevortov pos 
TO cupEepov TV didrwy), which is explained in eis 16 petadaBety 
(cp. 67) tis dyidtnTos adtod. ‘“Ayiétys is a rare term, which 
begins to appear late in Hellenistic Judaism (e.g. 2 Mac 15? rod 
mavta epopavtos pel ayiorntos: Test. Levi 34 trepdvw racns 
dy.dtytos), and, except as a v./, in 2 Co 117, occurs nowhere else 
in the NT. Here it denotes the divine life, to share in which is 
the outcome of 6 dyacpds oF xwpts obdels SWerar (7c. have a 
direct experience of) tov kdptov (v.14). The writer, in this contrast, 
is simply arguing that the divine education, which involves some 
suffering, as all watdefa does, is more worthy of obedience from 
mature people than even the parental discipline to which, for all 
its faults ot temper, they submitted during childhood. The say- 
ings of Isokrates, that while the roots of wadefa were bitter, its 
fruits were sweet, was a commonplace of ancient morals; the 
writer is going to develop it in a moment. Meantime he alludes 
to the equally well-known truth that zadefa might involve severe 
physical treatment. 


Two examples may be added of this doctrine that education involves a 
discipline which sometimes requires the infliction of pain. Maximus of Tyre 
(Diss. iv. 7), in arguing that the desire to give pleasure is by no means an in- 
variable proof of true affection, asks: g@iAodow dé wou kal maidas marépes Ket 
diddoxaror pwabyrds kal ri dy ein dviapdrepov 7} madi marhp Kal uabnry diddo- 
kados; so Philo argues in de Migrat. Abrah. 20, cwppovicrdv ws Eocxe Todrs 


XII. 11.] THE GOOD OF DISCIPLINE 205 


éore Td @00s, mavdaywyav, didackddwv, yovéwy, mpecBuTépwr, adpxdvTwv, vouwv* 
dverdlfovres yap, ore 5 Srrov kal Koddfovres Exacror ToUTwy delvous Tas Wuxas 
amepydfovrat T@v madevouevwwv. Kal ExOpds pév ovdeis oddevl, pirou dé maar 
mavtes. In de parent. col. 4, he explains, dca rotr’ é&eort Tots marpdou kal 
KaTnyopelv mpos Tovs matdas Kal éuBpiléorepov vovberetv Kal, el wt Tals Ov axowv 
dmeiNais brelkovot, TUMTTEW Kal mpomndaklfev Kal KaTadely. 

In v.1! the writer sums up what he has been saying since v.5. 
Discipline or tatSela mpds 6 wapdv (a classical Greek phrase = for 
the moment, eg. Thuc. il. 22, op@v airovs mpds 76 rapdv xaderai- 
vovtas) o§ (7as . . . ov=absolute negative, not any) Soxet (to 
human feelings and judgment) xapas etvar &AAG AUrys (to be a 
matter of, efvac with gen. as in 10%). 

Naoa pev (x* P 33. 93) and aoa dé (p? xe A DC H K LW 6. 326. 929. 
1288. 1836 vg syr boh Chrys. etc.) practically mean the same thing, for the 
uév is concessive ( ‘Sof course” ) and dé is metabatic. But probably it was the 
awkwardness of the double yév that led to the alteration of this one. The other 
readings, waoa yap (Cosm. (221 C) Jer. Aug.) and raoa (D* 104. 460. 917 arm 
eth Orig. Cosm. (376 D)) are obviously inferior attempts to clear up the passage. 

“Yotepov 8€ (cp. Pr 5% 4 (of the harlot) 1 wpds xarpov Auraiver 
cov dapvyya' VaTEpov pévTor miKpoTEpov XoAHS evpyoes), but later 
on discipline yields fruit; it is not a stone flung down arbitrarily 
on human life, but a seed. By kapmév cipyyikdy Stxatocdyys the 
writer means fruit (xaprds as often=result or outcome), which 
consists in (genit. of apposition) dicaocvvy (as in 117 a generic 
term for the good life as a religious relationship to God). But 
why eipyvuxdy? Possibly in contrast to the restiveness and pain 
(AUwns) of the period of discipline, when people are being trained 
(yeyupvacpévors); when the discipline does its perfect work, 
there is no friction between the soul and God. But there is also 
the suggestion of ‘“‘saving” or “blissful.” Philo quotes Pr 
311.12 (see above on v.°) as a saying of Solomon (¢he peaceful 
(eipnvixds) ; the significance of this he finds in the thought that 
subjection and obedience are really a wholesome state for people 
who are inclined to be self-assertive, uncontrolled, and quarrel- 
some. He thinks that Noah is rightly called by a name denoting 
rest, since petiacw npepatov dé kal novydlovta Kal orabepoy ere dé 
kal eipyvixov Biov of Kkadokdyabiav tetiunkdtes (Abrah. 5). To 
take eipyvixdv in some such sense (salutaris) would yield a good 
interpretation ; and this is confirmed by the similar use of eipyvn 
in v.!4 and of the adjective in 3 Mac 6*, where the Jews, in the 
ecstasy of their relief, yopots ovvictavto edtdppocivns eipynvixns 
onpetov. ‘Those who stand their training reap a safe, sound life 
at last. In its social aspect, eipyvixov could only refer to the 
brotherly love of the community; the writer might be throwing 
out a hint to his readers, that suffering was apt to render people 
irritable, impatient with one another’s faults. The later record 
even of the martyrs, for example, shows that the very prospect of 


206 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS ([XII.11, 12. 


death did not always prevent Christians from quarrelling in 
prison. This may be the meaning of eipyvexdy in Ja 3}8, but it is 
out of keeping with the present context. 

A close parallel to v.! is the saying of Aristotle (see above, for the similar 
remark of Isokrates), quoted by Diog. Laertius (v. 1. 18): ris madelas py 
Tas pev plfas elvar muxpas, yAuKets dé rods Kaprovs. In pest. Arist. 232, 
Tovs yap am avbrijs (2.¢é. Suxacoovyys) ddurlav karacKkevdvev, though the ddumla 
here is freedom from misfortune. Clem. Alex. (Strom. vii. 10. 56), after 
speaking of the time when we are delivered from the chastisements and 
punishments as ék Trav duaprnudrwy els matdelay vrouévouev cwrnprov [He 
127], adds: ued’ Hy drodtrpwov 7d yépas Kal ai Timal TeXeLwOeiow drodldovrai 

. . kal Geol rhv mpoonyoplay KéxXnvrat ol civOpovoar TOV dAwv Gedy, Trav bd 
T@ CWTHPL THWTa TETAYMEVWV, yEevNTOMEVOL. 

The writer now resumes the imperative tone (vv.!%), with a 
blend of counsel and warning. The discipline of trouble. is 
viewed under an active aspect; men must co-operate with God, 
exerting themselves to avoid sin (v.1) by the exercise of personal 
zeal and church-discipline. Otherwise, the results may be fatal. 
The exhortation broadens out here, resuming the tone and range 
of 102F, 

12 So (616 as in 61) ‘up with your listless hands! Strengthen your weak © 
knees!” %8 And ‘‘ make straight paths for your feet” to walk in. You must 
not let the lame get dislocated, but rather make them whole. ‘4 Aim at peace 
with all—at that consecration without which no one will ever see the Lord ; ™ see 
to it that no one misses the grace of God, ‘‘ that no root of bitterness grows up 
to be a trouble” by contaminating all the rest of you ; 8 that no one turns to 
sexual vice or to a profane life as Esau did—Esau who for a single meal 
‘* parted with his birthright.” '" You know how later on, when he wanted to 
obtain his inheritance of blessing, he was set astde; he got no chance to repent, 
though he tried for tt with tears. 

For the first time, since the hints in 3!? 41 and 611, the writer 
alludes to differences of attainment in the little community. 
Hitherto he has treated them asa solid whole. But the possi- 
bility of individual members giving way has been voiced in 102%, 
and now the writer (1) widens his appeal; his readers are to 
maintain their faith not only for their own sakes but for the sake 
of those who at their side are in special danger of collapsing. 
The courage of their évopovy is more than a personal duty; they 
are responsible for their fellow-members, and this involves the 
duty of inspiriting others by their own unswerving, unflagging 
faith. The admonition, as in 131", is addressed to the whole 
community, not to their leaders. The general aim of vy. 18 js 
to produce the character praised by Matthew Arnold in his lines 
on Rugby Chapel: 


‘Ye move through the ranks, recall 
The stragglers, refresh the out-worn... 
Ye fill up the gaps in our files, 
Strengthen the wavering line, 


XII. 12, 18.) RESPONSIBILITY FOR OTHERS 207 


Stablish, continue our march, 
On, to the bound of the waste, 
On, to the City of God.” 


He begins in v.!” by using scriptural language borrowed freely 
from Is 35° (ioxvoare, xelpes dvemévar Kal yovata mapadedvpeva), 
but in a form already current in Sir 25°? (yetpes wapepévar kal 
yovata mapaXeAvpéva), and also from Pr 4° (dpGas tpoxids rove 
tois tooiv). This metaphorical language for collapsing in listless 
despair is common, e.g., in Sir 21? where yetpes mapepevar is 
bracketed with “cowardly hearts,” in Philo’s description of the 
Israelites who longed to return to Egypt, of pev yap mpoxapovres 
avérecov, Bapiv aytiradov hynodpevor Tov Tévov, Kal TAS XElpas br 
dobevelas Womrep areipyKdtes GOAnTal KabjKav (de Congressu Erud. 
29, cp. He 111°), and especially in the description of moral 
encouragement in Job 4° 4 ei yap od évovlérnoas mtodXods, Kal 
xéipas aobevovs mapexdArecas, dobevodyvtas Te eLavéeotyoas pyyacw, 
yovaciv te advvatrotow Odpoos mepieOyxas. In Dt 32°° rapadcdv- 
pévous is parallel to mapeiévovs, and in Zeph 31° the appeal 
is @dpoe . . . pn tapeobwoav at yxetpés cov.! "AvopPdoate 
(literally = straighten, renew) goes with ydvara better than with 
xetpas, but the sense is plain. In v.}, if moujoate is read in the 
first clause, kal tpoxids 6p0as tmoujoate Tots Tooly Spay is a hexa- 
meter (p. lvii). By 76 xwddy the writer means “those who are 
lame,” these crippled souls in your company. 

Probably the roveire of 8* P 33. 917. 1831 (Orig.) has been conformed, in 
monoare (x° AD H KL, etc., Chrys.), to the preceding dvop@dcare (so, é.g., 
B. Weiss, in Zexte u. Untersuch. xiv. 3. 4, 9, who declares that the older 
codices never yield any case of an original aor. being changed into a present), 


though some edd. (é.g. von Soden) regard woujoare as the original text and 
moveire as having been conformed to LXX (cp. Mt 3%). 


As ia6 8 paddov shows, éxtpawf here has its medical sense 
(e.g. Hippol. de offic. med. 14, os pare dvaxAGrac pate éxtpé- 
wnat), not the common sense of being “turned aside” (as, ¢.g., 
in Philo, Quaest. in Exod. 2379 ot advddktws ddoropodvtes 
Stapapravovaw THs 6pOjs Kal AewPdpov ws woAXdaxKis eis avodias Kal 
dvaBarovs kai tpaxeias atparovs éxtpérerOa' TO rapamrAnoiy éotww 
dre kal ai Woxal TO vedy Traideias ayoupodvow, and in M. Aurel. 1. 7, 
Kal TO pi) extpamnvar eis ChrAov codiotikov). In Od. Sol 6!4* the 
ministers of the divine grace are praised in similar terms for 
their service to weaker Christians : 


‘They have assuaged the dry lips, 
And the will that had fainted they have raised up:... 
And limbs that had fallen 
They have straightened and set up.” 
1 Clem. Hom. xii. 18, ai xetpes bard Snyudrwr rapelOynoav. 


208 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS [XII 18, 14. 


But here it is the rmembers as a whole who are addressed, and 
Tpox. dp0as 7. T. Tooty Guay means “keep straight ” (zociv, dative = 
“for your feet”)—it is the only way to help your fellow-members 
who have weakened themselves. Keep up the tone of your 
community, move in the right direction, to prevent any of your 
number from wavering and wandering. The straight path is the 
smooth path, it is implied; if any limping soul is allowed to 
stray from the straight course, under the influence of a bad 
example, he will be made worse instead of better. The admoni- 
tion in Zes¢. Sim. 573 is interesting, as it suggests the train of 
thought here between vv.12 and 16 ; 


> , X , Chur 4 , 
ayabivare Tas Kapdias trav evwriov Kuptov 
, a , 
kat evOvvare Tas Sd00s tuadv evdrLov Tov avOpdrwy 
/ , \ , 

kal €cece etpioxovres xapiv évwmiov Kvupiov kat avOpwrwv. 
puvragacbe otv amd THS Topveias, 
OTL 7) Topveia pyTnp eoTi TOV KaKOv, 

/ > A nw n \ aA fr , 
xwpilovea amo Tov Peod Kat mpoceyyilotoa TO BeXiap. 


The author of Npds ‘EBpatous knows that the difficulties in the way 
of faith are more than mere despair. In 1211! he has been 
dealing with the need of cheerful courage under the strain of 
life ; this leads to the appeal of v.!%. But while there is nothing 
so infectious as cowardice or despair, he rapidly passes on, 
in vv.l3£ (kaf xrA.), to warn his readers against some specific 
temptations in the moral life. He continues, in a third impera- 
tive (v.14), eipyynv SidKxete (an OT phrase, 1 P 3!) pera mdvtov. 
Here pera goes with duoxere in the sense of “along with” (as in 
119 13°3, for our author avoids avy), and wdvrwy means “all the 
(other) dytoc” (as in 1374). The call is to make common cause 
with all the rest of the Christians in the quest for God’s cipyvn, 
t.e. (see above on v.!!) the bliss and security of a life under God’s 
control. It is eipyvy in a sense corresponding to the older sense 
of felicity and prosperity on the ground of some (messianic) 
victory of God, practically as in Lk 17 198 the Christian 
salvation; only this comprehensive sense does justice to the 
term here and in 137, Hence the following xaé is almost = 
“even.” 


Eipyvy in a similar sense occurs repeatedly in the context of the passage 
already quoted from Proverbs: e.g. 3'*? vié, éudv vouluwy uh émidavOdvov, 
Ta dé phuara mou TypelTw oh Kapdla* ufKos yap Blov Kal éryn fwhs kal elphyny 
mpocOjncovely go .. . 3° amdpxov alr@ amd cGy Kaprdv dixacocvvns . 
316 17 éx rod orbuaros avrijs éxropeverat dixatoovvyn Kal mdvres ol TplBo. adrhs 
év elpdvyn . . . 37% iva ropevy meroibws ev elpivy mdoas ras ddovs cov. After 
Pr 4% (as quoted above) there follows the promise, avrds 58 ras 6p0as momo 
Tas Tpoxlas cov, Tas dé mopelas cou év elpnyy mpodéer. 


The conventional interpretation takes elpyvynv with peta mavtov (Ze. all 








XII. 14, 15.] A WARNING 209 


your members). This yields a fair sense, for a quarrelsome church is a real 
hindrance to effective faith; the quarrelsomeness here would be due to the 
presence of faulty persons, whose lapses were apt to be irritating, and what 
would break eipjvn (z.e. mutual harmony) in such cases is the spirit of harsh- 
ness in dealing with faults, censoriousness, or aloofness, just as what makes 
for elpjvn is a concern for purity and goodness inspired by forbearance and 
patience. But all this is read into the text. There is no hint of such dangers 
elsewhere in IIpds ‘EBpatous as there is in 1 P 38- and Ro 12). Our author 
is characteristically putting a new edge on an old phrase like diwxere elpjyny. 


What eipyvy specially involved is shown in kat tév déyvacpdy 
xtX. Here dyvacpéds is not to be identified with cwdpoauvy in the 
special sense of 13*; it is the larger “consecration” to God 
which all &yvo. must maintain. In fact, dudKete tov dytacpdy KTA. 
is simply another description of the experience called “sharing 
in God’s ayidtns” (v.°). Xwpis generally precedes, here it follows, 
the word it governs (06), either for the sake of the rhythm or to 
avoid a hiatus (06 ot8eis). ‘“‘To see the Lord,” is an expression 
common in Philo for that vision of the Divine being which is 
the rare reward of those who can purify themselves from the 
sensuous (cp. H. A. A. Kennedy’s Phzlo’s Contribution to Religion, 
pp. 192f.). Kupuos is God in vv.°and ®; here, in view of 9%, it 
might be Jesus (as 2°), though “to see God” (vg ‘“‘deum”) as a 
term for intimate personal fellowship is more adequate to the 
context. People must be on the alert against tendencies to in- 
fringe this dyvaopds (v.1°) ; éruckotodvtes, one form and function of 
TapaKadouvtes (107), introduces three clauses, beginning each with 
py tus, though it is not clear whether the third (v.16) is intended 
as an example of prov@Gow or as a further definition of the 
second pa tis (piLa:xrA.). The first clause, py tus botepay (sc. 7) 
dd Tis xdpitos Tod Ge00, shows dotepety (41) with dé as in 
Eccles 6? torepGv . . . dard ravros ov éribupynoe (Sir 7°4 uy torépe 
dé kAadvrwv has a different sense). In writing dd tis ydputos 
tov Jeod the writer may have had already in mind the words of 
Dt 2938 (uy ris eorw ev tiv... tivos 7 Sidvora eéexAwev ard 
kuptov Tov Geov jay), which he is about to quote in the next clause. 


The rhetorical tone comes out in the two iambic trimeters 06 ywpls ovdels 
Berar Tov Kvptov and émickorobyres wh Tis VoTEpGy ard. 


The next clause, py tis pila mxpias dvw pvouga evoxd#, is a 
reminiscence of the warning against idolatry and apostasy in Dt 
2918, which A (as well as F*) preserves in this form, py tis éorw 
év tylv pila mixpias avw pvovaa évoxAy (so B*: év yoAH B) kai 
aixpia (B*: kat mixpia B). The form is ungrammatical, for éorw 
is superfluous, as is kat mxpia. On the other hand, the text of B 
yields no good sense, for a root can hardly be said to grow up év 
XoAq, and xai mixpia is left stranded; the alteration of muxpia 
in B*¥ does not help matters, for it is not preceded by év xodAf, 


14 


210 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS [XII. 15, 16. 


Plainly the writer found something like the words of A in his 
text of the LXX; he may have omitted éorw and kai mxpia. 
The confusion between -oyAy and xodAy Is intelligible, as dxAos 
and xéAos are confused elsewhere (Blass reads év xoAq here, 
which requires 7) or éorw to be supplied). °Evoxdq is the present 
subjunctive of évox\ety, which is used in 1 Es 2!9 (évoyAotea) 
and 2% (évoyAjoa) of rebellion disturbing and troubling the 
realm. As a general term for “troubling” or “vexing,” it is 
common both in classical Greek and in the papyri, either 
absolutely or with an accusative, as, eg., Polystr. Zpicur. (ed. 
C. Wilke) 84. 4, 083 tf’ évds tovtwv évoxAncapévovs npas, the 
edict of M. Sempronius Liberalis (Aug. 29, 154 A.D.): & TH 
oikeia ™ yew py |éa ™pooKapTepovot py évox)etv (B GU. il. 372); 
and ‘Aristoph. Frogs, 709 f., ob wohvv ot8 6 wiGnKos obros 6 viv 
évoyAdv. As for fifa (of a person, as, ¢.g., in t Mac 1? kat 
efprOev e& abradv pila apyaptwAos “Avtioxos ‘Exupavys) muxptas 
(genitive of quality), the meaning is a poisonous character and 
influence (cp. Ac 873). The warning in Deuteronomy is against 
any pernicious creature in the community, who by cool insolence 
and infidelity draws down the divine sentence of extermination 
upon himself and his fellows. Here the writer thinks of people 
who consider that immediate gratification of their wishes is 
worth more than any higher end in life; they value their spiritual 
position as sons (vv.5) so little, that they let it go in order to 
relapse on some material relief at the moment. Such a nature 
is essentially BéBndos, devoid of any appreciation of God’s 
privileges, and regarding these as of no more importance than 
sensuous pleasures of the hour. Under the bad influence of this 
(810 tavtTys, X DK LW 326, etc., as in 137: d:a airs, A H P 33. 
424* syrbkl boh Clem. etc., as in 114 1214), all the rest (ot mwodAot, 
after one has been mentioned, as in Ro 5) etc.) may be tainted 
(utavOGor), and so (cp. on ro”) rendered incapable of dpecOar tév 
Kuptov. 

The third clause (v.16) is py tis (sc. 4) mépvos i BéBndos (for 
the collocation see Philo, de Sacerdot. 8, ropvy kat BeByiAw copa 
Kal Wuxnv, and for this transferred sense of 8. (= Lat. profanus) 
see Jebb-Pearson’s Lragments of Soph. ii. 208); BeBydos is 
only once applied to a person in the LXX, viz. in Ezk 2175 od 
BéBnre avope (=05n), then to people like Antiochus (3 Mac 


2°14) or (3 Mac 715 rods BeByrovs xepwodpevor) recreant Jews. 
In adding &s “Hoad xrA. the writer chooses the story of Esau, in 
Gn 2578-34 271-89 to illustrate the disastrous results of yielding 
to the &waptia of which he had spoken in v.1.. There can be no 
Stopovn, he implies, without a resolute determination to resist 
the immediate pleasures and passions of the hour. As Cicero 
puts it in the De Finzbus, 1. 14, “plerique, quod tenere atque 


IL i6, 17.) THE SIN OF ESAU 211 


servare id quod ipsi statuerunt non possunt, victi et debilitati 
objecta specie voluptatis tradunt se libidinibus constringendos 
nec quid eventurum sit provident, ob eamque causam propter 
voluptatem et parvam et non necessariam et quae vel aliter 
pararetur et qua etiam carere possent sine dolore, tum in morbos 
graves, tum in damna, tum in dedecora incurrunt.” But why 
choose Esau? Probably owing to rabbinic tradition, in which 
Esau is the typical instance of the godless who grow up among 
good people (Isaac and Rebekah) and yet do not follow their 
deeds, as Obadiah is of the good who grow up among the wicked 
(Ahab and Jezebel) and do not follow ¢hezr deeds (Sifre 133 on 
Nu 271). The rabbinic tradition! that Esau was sensual, is 
voiced as early as Philo, in the ad WVobilitate, 4 (6 dé petlov 
ameiOiys ék TOV yaoTpos Kal TOV peTa yaoTépa HOovav axparis eywv, 
id’ dv dvereicbn Kat mperBeiwy efictacbar TO peT adTod Kal 
peravoety edbis ep’ ols eEéorTy Kal povav kata Tod adeApod Kai pndev 
erepov 7) Ov dv AvIHTEL TOs yovels mpaypateverGat), where Philo 
interprets the petdvora of Esau as simply regret for a bad bargain. 
Our author may have considered Esau a mépvos literally—and in 
any case the word is to be taken literally (as in 13*), not in its 
OT metaphorical sense? of “ unfaithful ”—but the weight of the 
warning falls on 6éByAos, as is clear from the phrase dvti Bpdoews 
pias (cp. Gn 2578 7 Oypa airovd Bpaats airo). T. H. Green 
(Prolegomena to Ethics, § 96) points out that hunger was not the 
motive. ‘If the action were determined directly by the hunger, 
it would have no moral character, any more than have actions 
done in sleep, or,strictly under compulsion, or from accident, or 
(so far as we know) the action of animals. Since, however, it is 
not the hunger as a natural force, but his own conception of 
himself, as finding for the time his greatest good in the satis- 
faction of hunger, that determines the act, Esau recognizes 
himself as the author of the act... . If evil follows from it, 
whether in the shape of punishment inflicted by a superior, or 
of calamity ensuing in the course of nature to himself or those in 
whom he is interested, he is aware that he himself has brought 
it on himself.” The puas is emphatic: “id culpam auget, non 
misericordiam meretur” (Bengel). 

In the Cees from Gn 25%° (diédoro 5¢ "Hoad ra mpwroroxeia TY 
"TaxwB), &wédero (A C 623), as if from a form &modl8w (cp. Helbing, 105), is 
preferred by Lachmann, B. Weiss, WH. 

The warning is now (v.!”) driven home. “lote, indicative here 
(a literary Atticism, though Blass insists that it is chosen for the 


1Jub 25+ (Esau tempting Jacob to take one of his own two sensual 
wives). 

2 Tlopvela has this sense, and so has the verb (e.g. Ps 737" éEwdéOpevoas 
wdvra Tov TopyvevovTa amd cov). 


212 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS [ XII. 17. 


sake of the rhythm, to assimilate tore yap ér Kat pe(témerta) to 
the closing words of the preceding sentence), recalls to the 
readers the scripture story with which they were so familiar. 
“lore Stu kai (another item in his story) petémerta OéXwv KAypovo- 
pjoor (1 P 3°) thy eddoylay (=mpwrordxia as in 1 Ch 5}-?) 
dmedokipdaby (Jer 6°° dredoxivacev attrovs Kvpios: Ign. Lom. 8% 
éay amodokipacda). “AmodoxisdfeoBar is common in the Greek 
orators for officials being disqualified, but the rejection here is 
an act of God; Esau is a tragic instance of those who cannot 
get a second chance of perdvow. (6°). The writer has again the 
sombre, serious outlook which characterizes a passage like 6*°%, 
The very metaphor of plant-growth occurs here as there, and 
azredoxiuacOy recalls addxiuos. Meravora is impossible for certain 
wilful sins ; certain acts of deliberate choice are irrevocable and 
fatal Why this was so, in Esau’s case, is now explained; 
peTavolas yap témov obx eUpe (evpicoxw=obtain, with éxlyreiy as 
often in LXX, eg. Dt 47°), katwep peta Saxpdwy (emphatic by 
position) ék{ythoas adtHy (Ze. peravoiav. ‘‘ Meravoias Tdros is, In 
fact, perdvora. . . . When per. rémov is taken up again, the mere 
secondary tomos disappears, and it is airy, not adirdov, agreeing 
with the great thing really sought,” Alford). If the writer used 
his usual A text of the LXX, he would not have found any 
allusion to the tears of Esau in Gn 27%8, but the tears were 
retained, from the Hebrew, in Jub 26%, in other texts of the 
LXX, and in Josephus (Azz. i. 18. 7, revOos nyev eri TH Stvapapria. 
Kai atrod rots daxpvow a&xOopevos 6 watyp xtX.).1 ‘Those tears 
of Esau, the sensuous, wild, impulsive man, almost like the cry 
of some ‘trapped creature,’ are among the most pathetic in the 
Bible” (A. B. Davidson). Aéryv refers to petavotas, not to 
eddoytas (which would require petavoias . . . edpev to be taken 
as a parenthesis, a construction which is wrecked on the anti- 
thesis between eGpey and éxfnrjoas). The petdvoia is not a 
change in the mind of Isaac, which would require some additional 
words like tod matpdés. Besides, Esau does not beseech Isaac to 
alter his mind. Nor can it refer to a change in God’s mind. It 
is ‘a change of mind” on Esau’s part, “‘undoing the effects of 
a former state of mind” (A. B. Davidson). Bitterly as Esau 
regretted his hasty action, he was denied any chance of having 
its consequences reversed by a subsequent perdvoua; this is the 
writer’s meaning. ‘Advvarov radw dvaxatvilew eis weravoray is the 
law of God for such wilful offenders, and to try for a second 
perdvova is vain. Such is the warning that our author deduces 
from the tale of Esau. 


1 There is a striking parallel in De Mercede Conductis, 42, where 
Lucian describes an old man being met by % perdvoia daxptovoa és ovdéev 
Bpedos. 


XII. 17.] THE SIN OF ESAU 213 


This inexorable view agrees with Philo’s idea (Leg. Adleg. iii. 75, roAXais 
yap Wuxais peravola xpjobar Bovdrnbeioats ovK éwétpewev Oo Beds) that some, 
like Cain! (guod deter. pot. 26, re 5é ph Sexouévw perdvoavy Kalv ov 
brepBodhv dyous), are too bad to repent, though Philo illustrates it here not 
from Esau, but from Lot’s wife. In de Spec. Leg. ii. 5 he declares that 
luxurious spendthrifts are dvcxdOaproe cal Svolaror, ws unde Oe TH THY piow 
trew cvyyvauns ad€oicAat. In Jub 35'4 Isaac tells Rebekah that ‘‘ neither Esau 
nor his seed is to be saved.” But the idea of Ipds ‘ESpatous is made still more 
clear by the use of petavolas témov as an expression for opportunity or 
chance to repent. This is a contemporary Jewish phrase; cp. Apoc. Bar 
85}? (‘* For when the Most High will bring to pass all these things, there will 
not then be an opportunity for returning . . . nor place of repentance”), 
4 Es 9 (‘‘ while a place of repentance was still open to them, they paid 
no heed”), which goes back to Wis 121° xplywy dé kara Bpaxd édldous réov 
peravolas (of God punishing the Canaanites). It is linguistically a Latinism,? 
which recurs in Clem. Rom. 75 (év yeved kal yevea meravotas témov dwKev 
6 deomérns Trois BovAouévas emriotpapjvar ém’ avrdy) and Tatian (Ovat. ad 
Graecos, 15, dia Tovro yotv ) Tav daudvuw wrdoTacts ovK exer peTavolas 
rérov). But a special significance attaches to it in 4 Esdras, for example, 
where the writer (¢.g. in 7/°*) rules out any intercession of the saints for the 
ungodly after death, in his desire to show that ‘‘the eternal destiny of the 
soul is fixed by the course of the earthly life” (G. H. Box, Zhe Ezra- 
Apocalypse, pp. 154, 155). Here, as in the Slavonic Enoch (53), which also 
repudiates such intercession, ‘‘ we may detect the influence of Alexandrine 
theology, which tended to lay all stress upon the present life as determining 
the eternal fate of every man.” The author of IIpds ‘Efpatous shared this 
belief (cp. 97’) ; for him the present life of man contains possibilities which 
are tragic and decisive. He ignores deliberately any intercession of saints or 
angels for the living or for the dead. But he goes still further, with Philo 
and others, in holding that, for some, certain actions fix their fate beyond any 
remedy. He regards their case as hopeless; characters like Esau, by an 
act of profane contempt for God, are rejected for ever, a second perdvoa being 
beyond their reach. 


The connexion (ydp) between the finale (vv.!82%) and what 
precedes lies in the thought that the higher the privilege, the 
higher the responsibility. In Leg. Adleg. 111. 1, Philo quotes Gn 
2527 to prove that virtue’s divine city is not meant for human 
passions ; ov yap wépuxev 7 THY TaGGv OnpevtiKy KaKia THY apeTns 
moXduv, wickedness banishing men from the presence and sight 
of God. But this line of thought is not in the writer’s mind. 
It is more relevant to recall that Esau typifies exclusion from 
God in Jub 15% (“Ishmael and his sons and his brothers and 
Esau, the Lord did not cause to approach Him”); yet even 
this is not needful to explain the turn of thought. The writer is 
continuing his grave warning. As vv.!*!" recall the first warning 
of 6*8, so he now proceeds to reiterate the second warning of 
1076-81, reminding his readers that they stand in a critical position, 


1 Philo read pelf{wy 7 alrla wou rod ddeOjvac in Gn 4}. 

2 Livy, xliv. 10, ‘‘ poenitentiae relinquens locum” (cp. xxiv. 26, ‘‘locus 
poenitendis”’) ; cp. Pliny’s £//. x. 97, ‘‘ex quo facile est opinari, quae turba 
hominum emendari possit, si sit poenitentiae locus,” where the phrase is used 
in quite a different sense, of a chance to give up Christianity. 


214 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS [XII. 17, 18. 


in which any indifferences or disobedience to God will prove 
fatal. This is the note of vv.?5-9 in particular. But he leads up 
to the appeal by describing in a vivid passage the actual position 
of his readers before God (vv.18-*4); their new status and en- 
vironment appeals even more powerfully and searchingly for an 
unworldly obedience to God than the old status of the People. 

18 You have not come (wpooednArAvVOate) to what you can touch, to ‘* flames 
of fire,” to “mist” and “gloom” and ‘‘ stormy blasts, ® to the blare of a 
trumpet and toa Voice” whose words made those who heard tt refuse to hear 
another syllable * (for they could not bear the command, ‘‘ If even a beust 
touches the mountain, tt must be stoned”)—*' indeed, so awful was the sight 
that Moses said, ‘‘ I am terrified and aghast.” * You have come (wpooednhv- 
Bare) to mount Sion, the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, to 
myriads of angels in festal gathering, * to the assembly of the first-born 
registered in heaven, to the God of all as gudge, to the spirits of just men made 
perfect, *4 to Jesus who mediates (88 9") the new covenant, and to the sprinkled 
blood whose message ts nobler than Abel's. 


The passage moves through two phases. (vv.!8?! and 22-24), 
contrasting the revelation at mount Sinai (2? 10%) with the new 
diabyxn, the one sensuous, the other spiritual; the one striking 
terror with its outward circumstances of physical horror, the 
other charged with grace and welcome as well as with awe. The 
meditation and appeal are woven on materia! drawn from the 
LXX descriptions of the plague of darkness on Egypt (Ex 102! 
Wnradyntov oKdtos .. . éy€vero axdtos yvodos veAAa) and the 
theophany at Sinai (Dt 41! mpooydGere Kat Eornte bird 7d dpos* 
Kal TO Opos exaiero Tupt ews TOV ovpavov, oKdTOS, yvodos, OveAXa, 
povn peyadn, and Ex 191% apocéxere Eavrois Tod dvaBnvat eis TO 
Opos Kai Oryety TL adtov' Tas 6 ddpevos TOD Spovs OavaTw TeAEvTHTEL 

. &v Aous ALGoBoArANOHcerar H Bor. xatarogevOnoerar’ édy re 
KTHVvos édv te avOpwros, ov Cyoerar. .. Kai éyivovto gdwvat Kal 
dotparal Kal vepéeAn yvoPpddys éx dpous Lewd, pwvy tHs oddmvyyos 
NXE peya* Kat érronOy was 6 Aads 6 ev TH wapeuor(H). In v.38 
the text is difficult and perhaps corrupt. WydAapwpéva Sper 
would be equivalent to wWyAadyTa dpe, a tangible, material 
mountain; but as dpe is a gloss (added, from v.22, by D K L 
255 syr™! arm Athan. Cosm. etc., either before or after WyA.), 
though a correct gloss, y. may be taken (a) either with -upi, 
(4) or independently. In the former case, (a) two constructions 
are possible. (i) One, as in vg (‘“‘ad tractabilem et accensi- 
bilem ignem”), renders ‘‘to a fire that was material (or palpable) 
and ablaze”; (ii) ‘‘to what was palpable and ablaze with fire” 
(rvpt in an ablative sense). (i) is a daring expression, and the 
implied contrast (with v.?%) is too remote. The objection to (ii) 
is that wvpé here, as in the OT, goes with the following datives. 
It is on the whole preferable (4) to take WyAaduwpery by itself 

















XII. 19-21. | THE TERRORS OF SINAI 215 


(sc. rue). The mountain could not be touched indeed (v.”°), but 
it was a tangible object which appealed to the senses. This is 
the point of contrast between it and the Xidv dpos, the present 
participle being equivalent to the verbal adjective WyAadnros. 
Kypke connects yw. with mvpi in the sense of “touched by 
lightning” (‘‘igne tactum et adustum”), comparing the Latin 
phrase “fulmine tactum.” But the Greek term is 6/yyavev, and 
in any case this interpretation really requires dpe, the mountain 
“‘sundering ” under the lightning touch of God (Ps 144° etc.). 


Two conjectures have been proposed, ter vevepwuévy by G. N. Bennett 
(Classical Review, vi. 263), who argues that this ‘‘ would fit in exactly with 
the OT accounts, which represent the summit of the mountain as burnt with 
fire, while lower down it was enveloped in a dense cloud” ; and redefadw- 
pévw (Sper) by E. C. Selwyn (Journal of Theological Studtes, ix. 133, 134)= 
** calcined” (a calcined volcano). Others (e.g. P. Junius) less aptly insert 
ov or uy before YnAagwyévyw, to harmonize the phrase with v.”. 


In the rest of the description, 6p» is a poetical word (cp. 
de Mundo, 400a, heaven ravros Codov kat ardxrov Kwypatos Kexw- 
pispevov), which the writer prefers to oxdros. Kat @uéAdy— 
OveAAy, a hurricane, is defined by Hesychius as dvéuov cvatpodi 
Kat oppy, » KaTaryis (cp. Hom. Od. 5. 317), and in de Mundo, 3954, 
as mvedua Biorov Kat apvw mpocaddAdpevov. In v.!9 jxw (ny 
"Arrixot’ Hxos “EAAnves, Moeris) is a synonym for the LXX ev4, 
which the writer intends to use immediately. Philo had already 
used jos in de Decalogo, 11: wévta 8 ws eixds TA wept TOY TOTOV 
éOavpatouvpyeito, Ktvmous Bpovtav pelovwv 7) wate xwpely axods, 
aotpaTav Aduperw atryoedeotatas, dopdtov odAmlyyos xn ™pos 
pyjKiotov arotevovon . . . Tupos ovpaviov hope karve Babel Ta ev 
KUKAw ovokiacovtos. In de Spec. Leg. ii. 22 he explains that the 
gwvn oddAmiyyos announced to all the world the significance of 
the event. Finally, kat dwvf pnpdtev (the decalogue in Dt 4}%), 
fs (2.2. the wv) ot dkovcavtes Tapytyicavto pi) (pleonastic nega- 
tive as in Gal 57; hence omitted by 8* P 467) mpooteOfvar (the 
active mpooGetvat, in A, is less apt) adrots (ze. the hearers) Adyov 
(accus. and infinitive construction after uy, cp. Blass, § 429). 
The reference in v.2° is to the scene described in Dt 52°f, where it 
is the leaders of the nation who appeal in terror to Moses to take 
God’s messages and orders for them: kai viv px drofavwper, ott 
éfavarddoe. nuas TO TUp TO péya TOTO, eov TpoTHdpea rpets 
akovoa THY pdwovnv Kupiov tov Oeod apov er, Kal drofavovpeba. 
But in Ex 20!” it is the people, as here, who appeal to Moses, 
pn Aadreirw mpos Has 6 Oeds, wy Grofdvwpev. Td dracteAddpevov 
(in Ex 19}%, see above) is passive. AtaoréAAopar is said by Anz 
(Subsidia, 326f.) not to occur earlier than Plato; here, as in 
Jth 11!2 (60a duecreiAato atrots 6 Geos), of a divine injunction. 
In v.?! havtafépevoy is not a LXX term (for the sense, cp. Zec 101 


216 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS |XII. 21-23 


Kvptos éroinoev pavtacias, of natural phenomena like rain); it is 
used here for the sake of alliteration (fof. ¢avr.). To prove 
that even Moses was affected by the terrors of Sinai, the writer 
quotes from Dt 9! éxoBéds civ, adding rhetorically atte EvTPOLLOS. 
He forgets that Moses uttered this cry of horror, not over the 
fearful spectacle of Sinai but at a later ae over the worship of 
the golden calf. For évrpopos, cp. 1 Mac 13? evtpopos xa expoBos 
(v.2. &uhoBos). The phrase évrpoyos yevouevos is applied by 
Luke to the terror of Moses at the dwv7 Kupiov out of the burning 
bush (Ac 7°?). 


Assonance led to é@xrpogsos (8 D*) or éudoBos (M 241. 255. 489. 547. 
1739 Thdt.). “Evrpouos was read by Clem. Alex. (Protrept. ix. 2).. 


The true position of Christians is now sketched (vv.??-#4), 
"ANAG mpoceAnAUOaTe Luv dper Kat méder (111% 16) Geos Lavtos, 
the author adding ‘lepoucadhp éroupaviw (111°) in apposition to 
woAe, and using thus the archaic metaphors of Is 18’, Am 1?, 
Mic 41 etc., in his picture of the true fellowship. Paul had 
contrasted mount Sinai (=the present Jerusalem) with 7 avw. 
‘IepovcaAnp. Our author’s contrast is between mount Sion 
(=‘TepovoaAnp érovpavios) and mount Sinai, though he does not 
name the latter. From the zéAts he now passes to the zroAtrau. 

In Chagiga, 12d, i. 33, Resh Lakish deduces from 1 K 8 and Is 63% 
that zebul, the fourth of the seven heavens, contains ‘‘ the heavenly Jerusalem 


and the temple,” z.é. as the residence of deity ; ; while Ma’on, the fifth heaven, 
holds the ‘‘ companies of ministering angels.” 


The second object of mpooedn\UOate is Kal. pupidew (so 
En 4o!: “I saw thousands of thousands and ten thousand times 
ten thousand before the Lord of spirits”) d&yyé\ev, with which 
mavnyupe. must be taken, leaving the following xat to introduce 
the third object (v.28). The conception of the angels as popiddes 
goes back to traditions like those voiced in Ps 6817 (70 a dpya TOU 
Geod puprotAdatov, xiArddes evOnvovvTwv* 6 KUpLos év adrots év Suwa) 
and Dan 7”? (ytpar prpiddes). Tavijyvpus was a term charged 
with Greek religious associations (cp. R. van der Loeff, De Zudis 
Eleusinits, pp. 85 f.), but it had already been adopted by Greek 
Jews like the translators of the LXX and Josephus for religious 
festivals. Moavnydper describes the angelic hosts thronging with 
glad worship round the living God. Their relation to God is 
noted here, as in ie their relation to human beings. “Evéa 
Tavipyups €kel xapa, as Theophylact observes (tapas evOupias, 
iv mavyyupis émitnret, Philo, im Flacc. 14); but the joy of 
Lk 151° is not specially mentioned. Chrysostom’s suggestion is 
that the writer évrata tiv xapay Oeikvvot Kal tiv edppocivyy avrt 
Tov yvopov Kat TOU oKdTovs Kai THS OvéAAns. Augustine (Quaest. 
i. 168: ‘“‘accessistis ad montem Sion et ad ciuitatem dei Hier- 


XII. 23. | THE CELESTIAL CITIZENS 217 


usalem et ad milia angelorum exultantium ”) seems to imply not 
only that mavnydper goes with dyyéAwv, but that he knew a text 
with some word like zavyyvpifovtwv (Blass), as is further proved 
by boh (“keeping festival’), Orig** (laetantium, collaudantium), 
and Ambrose. There is a hint of this in Clem. Alex. Protrepzt. 
ix. 6, 7, avry yap % mpwtdtoKos éxxAynoia 7 ex ToAAGV ayabav 
ovykemevn Tadiwov’ Tadt got. TA TpwTdTOKA TA evarroyeypappeva. 
€v ovpavois Kal Tooavras pupiacw ayyéAwv cvpravynyupilovra. 

The human zodXtra: are next (v.”8) described as éxkdyoia 
Tpwrotdkwy atroyeypaupéevwy év odpavots. (For the collocation of 
angels and men, see En 39° ‘‘Mine eyes saw their [#e. the 
saints’] dwellings with His righteous angels, and their resting- 
places with the holy”; the Enoch apocalypse proceeding to the 
intercession of the angels (“‘and they petitioned, and interceded, 
and prayed for the children of men”) which the Christian writer 
deliberately omits.) The phrase describes what the author else- 
where calls 6 Aads (rot Meod), but in two archaic expressions, 
chosen to emphasize what Paul would have called their election. 
They are mpwréroxo (as Israel had been zpwréroxos, Ex 4?? etc.), 
with a title to God’s blessing (v.16 rpwrordxta). The choice of 
the plural instead of the collective singular was due to the 
previous plural in pupidow dayyéAwv. In dmroyeypappevev év 
odpavots there is a passing allusion to the idea of the celestial 
archives or register—a favourite poetical figure in which the 
Oriental expressed his assurance of salvation.t As in Lk 107 
so here, the phrase refers to men on earth, to the church militant, 
not to the church triumphant; otherwise év odpavots would be 
meaningless. 

This interpretation, which groups zavnyvpet with what precedes, is current 
in nearly all the early versions and Greek fathers, who generally assume it 
without question. The real alternative is to take uvpidow as further defined 
by ayyé\wv mavyytpe: kal éxxA\nola mpwrorikwy amoyeypaupévov év ovpavots. 
This introduces and leaves wvpidow rather abruptly, and implies that angels 
alone are referred to (so recently Dods, von Soden, Peake, Seeberg), called 
mpwrotéxot as created before men. But, while a later writer like Hermas 
( Vis. iii. 4) could speak of angels as of mp&roe xricbévres, Gtroyeypappévev 
cannot naturally be applied to them. Hermas himself (Vs. i. 3) applies that 
term to men (éyypagjoovrat els Tas BiBXous THs (ws mera TOv aylwv). 


A fresh sweep of thought now begins (7824), The writer 
is composing a lyrical sketch, not a law-paper; he reiterates the 
idea of the fellowship by speaking of God, men, and him by whom 
this tie between God and men has been welded, the allusion 
to Jesus being thrown to the end, as it is to form the starting- 
point for his next appeal (v.25). In kat xpitq 06 mdvtwv it is 
not possible, in view of 9? (wera d€ Totro kpiows) and of the 
punitive sense of xpivw in 10%, to understand xpiryjs as defender 

1 Clem. Hom. ix. 22, 7a dvépuara ev obpayg ws del fdvTwr avaypagphvat. 


218 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS [XII. 23, 24. 


or vindicator (so, eg., Hofmann, Delitzsch, Riggenbach). The 
words mean “to the God of all (angels and men, the living and 
the dead, Ac 104%), and to him as xpurys, to whom you must 
account for your life.” It is implied that he is no easy-going 
God. The contrast is not between the mere terrors of Sinai 
and the gracious relationship of Sion, but between the outward, 
sensuous terror of the former and the inward intimacy of the 
latter—an intimacy which still involves awe. In the next phrase, 
mvevpata Sixaiwy means the departed who have in this life been 
Sixavor in the sense of 10%! ; teteherwyévwy is added, not in the 
mere sense of “departed” (reAcvrav = TeAetovc Gat, TeAcLodv), but 
to suggest the work of Christ which includes the déxato, who 
had to await the sacrifice of Christ before they were “ perfected ” 
(11°), If this involves the idea of a descent of Christ to the 
under-world, as Loofs (eg. in LRZ. iv. 662) argues, it implies 
the group of ideas mentioned in 2!4, which may have lain in the 
background of the writer’s thought. At any rate the “ perfect- 
ing” of these dékaro, their teXetwors, was due to Jesus; hence 
(v.24) the writer adds, kat 8aOjKys véas peoity “Incod (again at — 
the end, for emphasis), where véas is simply a synonym for Kawijs 
(88 etc.). The classical distinction between the two terms was 
being dropped in the xowy. Tis véas ‘Iepovoadnp occurs in Zest. 
Dan 5%, and the two words are synonymous, e.g., in Zest. Levi 
814 (émruxAnOnoetar atTd dvopa Kaivov, OTe Bacireds . . . roinoes 
iepareiav veav). Indeed Blass thinks that the unexampled d.a6yKxns 
veds was due to a sense of rhythm; the author felt a desire to 
reproduce the — .. —— J — of the preceding wy rereActwpevov. 


In Cambodia (cp. # RZ. iii. 164) those who are present at a death-bed all 
‘*repeat in a loud voice, the patient joining in as long as he has the strength, 
‘ Arahan! Arahan!’ ‘the saint! the just one!’ (Pali araham=‘the 
saint,’ ‘one who has attained final sanctification’).” Bleek is so perplexed 
by xal mvevm. dik. TeX. coming between Oe@~ and *Iycod that he wonders 
whether the author did not originally write the phrase on the margin, intending it 
to go with ravnyvper or éxxAnolg. The curious misreading of D d, reenerdiw- 
uévwv, underlies Hilary’s quotation (tract. in Ps. 124: ‘‘ecclesia angelorum 
multitudinis frequentium—ecclesia primitivorum, ecclesia spirituum in domino 
fundatorum”’), Another odd error, mvevmare for mvevuaci, appears in D 
(boh ?), d and some Latin fathers (e.g. Primasius)—a trinitarian emendation 
(=107), 


In 8:a0yKys véas, as in 13”, the writer recalls the conception 
with which he had been working in the middle part of his argu- 
ment (chs. 7~10) ; now he proceeds to expand and explain the 
allusion in Kat atpatt fpavticpod (9!) kpetrrov (adverbial as in 
1 Co 7°8) XadodvTe mapa (as in 14 etc.) tov "ABed (=70! rod “ABA, 
cp. Jn 5°°). Reconciliation, not exclusion, is the note of the véu¢ 
diabyxyn. The blood of the murdered Abel (114) called out to 


1 70” ABeX (genitive) was actually read by L and is still preferred by Blass. 


XII. 24, 25. | A WARNING 219 


God in En 226 (where the seer has a vision of Abel’s spirit 
appealing to God) for the extinction of Cain and his descendants. 
The xpetrrov in Jesus here is that, instead of being vindictive 
and seeking to exclude the guilty, he draws men into fellowship 
with God (see p. xlii). The contrast is therefore not between the 
Voice of the blood of Jesus (AaAotvr.) and the Voice of the 
decalogue (v.!9), but between Jesus and Abel; the former opens 
up the way to the presence of God, the latter sought to shut it 
against evil men. The blood of martyrs was assigned an atoning 
efficacy in 4 Mac 628 1721f; but Abel’s blood is never viewed in 
this light, and the attempt to explain this passage as though the 
blood of Jesus were superior in redeeming value to that of Abel 
as the first martyr (so, ¢.g., Seeberg), breaks down upon the fact 
that the writer never takes Abel’s blood as in any sense typical 
of Christ’s. 


The application of vv.18-*4 now follows. Though we have a far 
better relationship to God, the faults of the older generation may 
still be committed by us, and committed to our undoing (vv.?5-2), 


25 See (Bdémere as 3'*) that you do not refuse to listen to his voice. ov tf 
they failed to escape, who refused to listen to their instructor upon earth, much 
less shall we, if we discard him who speaks from heaven. * Then his voice 
shook the earth, but now the assurance ts, ‘‘ once again I will make heaven as 
well as earth to quake.” ™ That phrase (rd 6€ as Eph 4°), ‘‘ once again,” de- 
notes (6ndot, as in 9°) the removal of what ts shaken (as no more than created), 
to leave only what stands unshaken. * Therefore let us render thanks that we 
get an unshaken realm ; and in thes way let us worship God acceptably —* but 
with godly fear and awe, for our God ts indeed ‘‘ a consuming fire.” 


The divine revelation in the sacrifice of Jesus (AaAotvzt) 
suggests the start of the next appeal and warning. From the 
celestial order, just sketched, the divine revelation (tév Aadodvra 

. Tov dw otpavay) is made to us; instead of rejecting it, which 
would be tragic, let us hold to it. The argument is: God’s 
revelation (v.25) implies a lasting relationship to himself (v.?8) ; 
and although the present order of things in the universe is 
doomed to a speedy fall (v.26), this catastrophe will only bring 
out the unchanging realm in which God and we stand together 
(v.27), The abruptness of the asyndeton in (v.25) BXémere pur xrA. 
adds to its force. Mapoimmonode . . . mapattnodpevor are only a 
verbal echo of mapytyoavto xrX. in v.!®; for the refusal of the 
people to hear God except through Moses is not blamed but 
praised by God (Dt 5%8). The writer, of course, may have 
ignored this, and read an ominous significance into the instinctive 
terror of the people, as if their refusal meant a radical rejection 
of God. Butthisis unlikely. By wapattnodpevor tov xpnpatifovta 
he means any obstinate rejection of what Moses laid down for 


220 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS [ XII. 25, 26. 


them as the will of God. Ei... od (as was the fact) é&€puyov 
(referring to the doom mentioned in 2? 37% 1029), As in 2° (as 
nuets expevéoueba), expevyw is used absolutely ; the weaker éeduyov 
is read only by 8& DK LM W tog, etc. In the following words 
there are three possible readings. The original text ran: (a) émt 
Yiis Wapattnodpevor tov xpypatifovra (S* A C D M d boh Cyr.), 
eri yns being as often thrown to the front for the sake of 
emphasis. But the hyperbaton seemed awkward. Hence (d) 
Tov éml ys mapaityodpevor x. (N° K L P Chrys. Thdt. etc.) 
and (¢) wapairyodpevor tov eri ys x. (69. 256. 263. 436. 462. 
467. 1837. 2005 vg) are attempts to make it clear that émi yjjs 
goes with tdv xpnparifovta, not with mapattnodpevor. The latter 
interpretation misses the point of the contrast, which is not 
between a rejection on earth and a rejection in heaven (!), but 
between a human oracle of God and the divine Voice a7 
ovpavav to us. The allusion in tov ypyparilovra! is to Moses, 
as Chrysostom was the first to see. To refuse to listen to him is 
what has been already called d6erety vopov Mwicéws (1078). As 
the Sinai-revelation is carefully described in 2? as 6 & dyyéAwv. 
AadnOeis Adyos, so here Moses is 6 xpnparifwv, or, as Luke puts 
it, ds édeEato Adyia Cavta Sodvac (Ac 78); he was the divine 
instructor of the Aads on earth. It is repeatedly said (Ex 20”, 
Dt 4°6) that God spoke to the people at Sinai é« rod otpavod, so 
that to take tév xpnpatifovra here as God, would be out of 
keeping with éwi tis yas. The writer uses the verb in a wider 
sense than in that of 8° and 117; it means “the man who had 
divine authority to issue orders,” just as in Jer 26? (rods Adyous 
ovs ouvéTagd gor advtots xpnuatioat), etc. He deliberately writes 
Tov xpyparifovra of Moses, keeping 7rév Aadodvra as usual for 
God. Then, he concludes, odd (altered, as in v.%, to woAA@ by 
D° K LM P ¥ 226, or to zdcw, as in g!4, by 255) padXov (Sc. ovK 
expevfouea) pets ot Tov (Sc. xpnuarilovra) aw obpavay atroctpeds- 
pevo. (with accus. as 3 Mac 37% dameorpewavto thy atipnrov 
modtreiav, and 2 Ti 1! dreorpadyody pe mavres). 


It is surprising that odpavod (& M 216. 424**. 489. 547. 623. 642. 920. 
1518. 1872 Chrys.) has not wider support, though, as 9”: *4 shows, there is 
no difference in sense. 


In v.76 of 4 pwvh Thy yhy éoddeuce tore is another (cp. vv.}% 14) 
unintentional rhythm, this time a pentameter. Tore, ze. at 
Sinai. But in the LXX of Ex 19}8, which the writer used, the 
shaking of the hill is altered into the quaking of the people, and 
Jg 5%! does not refer to the Sinai episode. Probably the writer 
inferred an earthquake from the poetical allusions in Ps 114? 


1 Cp. Jos. Ant, iii. 8. 8, Mwiions . . . éxpnuaritero wept Gv édeiro mapa 
Tov Oeod. 


XII. 26. | THE FINAL CATASTROPHE 221 


(eoarevbn » yn), Ps 685 7718 when these were associated with 
the special theophany at Sinai. Név 8€ émjyyeATror (passive in 
middle sense, as Ro 47") Xéywv, introducing a loose reminiscence 
and adaptation of Hag 2° (er ama ey ceiow Tov otpavov Kal THY 
ynv xrd.), where the prediction of a speedy convulsion of nature 
and the nations has been altered! in the LXX, by the intro- 
duction of ém, into a mere prediction of some ultimate crisis, 
with reference to some preceding cetots, z.e. for our writer the 
Sinai-revelation. The second and final ceious is to be at the 
return of Jesus (978). 

The anticipation of such a cosmic collapse entered apocalyptic. Thus the 
author of Apoc. Baruch tells his readers, ‘‘if you prepare your hearts, so as 
to sow in them the fruits of the law, it shall protect you when the Mighty 
One is to shake the whole creation” (32). 

In v.2’ the Haggai prediction is made to mean the removal 
(petdSeoww, stronger sense than even in 7!) tay cadevopévwr (by 
the cetous). There is a divine purpose in the cosmic catastrophe, 
however; it is tva petvyy tO ph cadeudpeva, z.c. the Baowdela 
doddeutos of the Christian order. For d&od\euvtos, compare Philo, 
de vit. Mosis, 1L tard be TOUTOU jLovov Pepa, doahevta, dxpddavra 

» pever tayiws ad 7s iyp-epas eypapn péxpe vov Kal ™pos TOV 
éreita. mavra Suapevety eArris aiTa aidva domep aGdvara. elw and 
gadedw are cognate terms (cp. e.g. Sir 161819 6 otpavos . . . Kal yi 
carevOnoovrat . . . auaTta py kat Ta OewéALa THs yns ovoceiovrat). 
Here oeiow is changed into cefw by D K L P d arm and some 
cursives, probably to conform with the form of the promise in 
Hag 27! (éya ceiw tov ovp. Kat tHv yhv). The hint is more 
reticent, and therefore more impressive than the elaborate pre- 
diction of the Jewish apocalyptist in Apoc. Bar 59%: “but also 
the heavens were shaken at that time from their place, and those 
who were under the throne of the Mighty One were perturbed, 
when He was taking Moses unto Himself. For He showed him 

. the pattern of Zion and its measures, in the pattern of 
which was to be made the sanctuary of the present time ” (cp. 
He 85). There is a premonition of the last judgment in En 
601, as a convulsion which shook not only heaven, but the nerves 
of the myriads of angels. 

“There have been two notable transitions of life,” says Gregory of 
Nazianzus (Orat. v. 25), in the history of the world, z.e. the two covenants, 
‘*which are also called earthquakes on account of their arresting character” 
(dia 7d TOO rpdypuaros mepiBdnrov) ; the first from idols to the Law, the second 
from the Law to the gospel. We bring the good news of yet a third earth- 


quake, the transition from the present order to the future (ry évretOev emt ra 
éxeive perdoraciv, Ta mnkére Kivovmeva, unde cadevdueva).? 


1 7,¢. while Haggai predicts ‘‘ it will be very soon,” the LXX says ‘‘ once 


> 


a Probably a reference to He 12%, 


222 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS [ XII. 26-28. 


Changes and crises may only serve to render a state or an 
individual more stable. Thus Plutarch says of Rome, in the 
disturbed days of Numa, xafdzep ta xataryyvipeva TO oeier Gan 
padAdov edpalerat, pavvvo dar doxodoa dua tov Kwdivev (Vit, Mum. 
8). But the writer’s point in v.?” is that there is an dod\eurtos 
Baowdeta ! already present, in the fellowship of the new S.aO%jxy, 
and that the result of the cosmic catastrophe will simply be to 
leave this unimpaired, to let it stand out in its supreme reality 
and permanence. ‘The passage is a counterpart to 11°12, where 
skies and earth vanish, though they are God’s own épya. So 
here, the writer puts in, by way of parenthesis, aS TreTOUnHevev. 
Kypke took memoupévwr, “pro TEeTOLNMEVHY, Sc. peTabecw,” COoM- 
paring Mt 5! where he regarded €Aaxiorwy as similarly equiva- 
lent to €Aaxiornv. The word would then be a genitive absolute, 
connecting with what follows: “all this being done so that,” etc. 
Even when zerowpévwv is taken in its ordinary sense, it is 
sometimes connected with iva «rA. (so, é.g., Bengel and Delitzsch) ; 
the aim of creation was to replace the provisional by the per- 
manent, the temporal by the eternal. A far-fetched interpreta- 
tion. Even the conjecture (Valckenaer) zerovypevwy (labouring 
with decay) is needless, though ingenious. In vv.?% 2° the final 
word upon this prospect and its responsibilities is said. Awd (as 
in v.!2), in view of this outlook (in v.?’), Baowdelay doddeutov 
(metaphorical, as, ég., Diod. Sic. xii. 29,. orovdai daoddevrat) 
TapadkapBdvovtes (cp. 2 Mac ro! and LZpist. Arist. 36, cal tpets 
dé wapadaBdovres tTHv PBactAreiav xtA., for this common phrase) 
éxwpev xdpiv (d.0 with pres. subjunctive as in 61). The unique 
and sudden reference to the primitive idea of Baowelo (see 
Introd., p. xxxiil) may be a reminiscence of the scripture from which 
he has just quoted ; the prediction about the shaking of heaven 
and earth is followed, in Hag 2?2, by the further assertion, xai 
kataotpeww Opovovs Baciréwv, Kal eoArAcOpetow Sivapw Bacriréwv 
trav e6vav. Possibly our author regarded the prediction in Dn 738 
(kat mapadnpovrac tHv Pactrelay ayor tWicrov Kal Kabeovow 
aitHv ews aidvos Tov aiwvwv) as fulfilled already in the Christian 
church, though he does not mean by BaovAeciay Trapahap,Pavoyres 
that Christians enter on their reign. 

Why thankfulness (for this common phrase, see Epict. i. 2. 23, 
Exo Xaply, ort pov deidy, and OP. 138178 (2nd century) da 
Ouovdv TH cdoavt. daredidopev xdpitas) should be the standing 
order for ‘them, the writer explains in 8 fis xrA.; it is the one 
acceptable Aerpevew (914), or, as he puts it afterwards (1315), the 
real sacrifice of Christians. Av 4s \atpevdmev (subj. cohortative 
in relative clause, like orjre in 1 P 5!) edapeot&s (not in LXX; 


1Cp. Wis 511 dikaoe dé els Tov aldva faow . . - Ajmpovras Td Baal- 
Necov THs edmpemelas . . . Ex xeLpds Kuplov, bri TH Seéia oKemdce: airous. 


XII. 28. | THE DUTY OF AWE 223 


an adverb from the verb in the sense of 11° 6) 76 666. The v./. 
éxouey (8 K P Lat syr™' eth etc.) is the usual (see Ro s}) 
phonetic blunder, though Aarpevowev (NX M P syr™ arm) would 
yield as fair a sense as Aarpevopeyv (A C D L 33. 104 Lat sah 
etc.). In pera .. . S€ous he puts in a characteristic warning 
against presumption. There are three readings. (a) etAaBelas 
kat d€ouvs, N* A C D 256. 263. 436. 1912 sah boh syr’® arm. 
(2) evrAaBelas kai aidods, 8° M P W 6. 104. 326. 1739 lat Orig. 
(c) aidods cat edAaBeias, K L 462 syr™ Chrys. Thdt. The acci- 
dental doubling of a (from xa/) led to (4), especially as aidods 
and e«iAaBeia were often bracketed together, and as deds was a 
rare word (first popularized in Hellenistic Judaism by 2 Macca- 
bees), EdhaBeta here as in 5” (cp. 117) of reverent awe. Kat 
yap 6 Geds pov wip katavadtoKov (v.29). Not ‘‘for our God too 
is a 7Up av.,” for the writer believed that the same God was God 
of the old d:a6yxy and of the new; besides, this rendering would 
require kat yap Huav 6 Beds. The phrase is from Dt 424 (Moses 
at Sinai to the Israelites) ot Kvpuos 6 Beds cov mip KatavadiocKov 
eativ, Oeds Cyrwrys (cp. 9%), referring to his intense resentment of 
anything like idolatry, which meant a neglect of the dabyjxn. 
There is no allusion to fire as purifying; the author of Wisdom 
(1616) describes the Egyptians as rupi xatavadickdpevor, and it is 
this punitive aspect of God which is emphasized here, the divine 
fndos (see p. XXXVI). 


This is one of Tertullian’s points (adv. Marc. i. 26-27) against the 
Marcionite conception of a God who is good-natured and nothing more : 
*‘tacite permissum est, quod sine ultione prohibetur . . . nihil Deo tam 
indignum quam non exsequi quod noluit et prohibuit admitti. . . malo 
parcere Deum indignius sit quam animadvertere. . . . Plane nec pater tuus 
est, in quem competat et amor propter pietatem, et timor propter potestatem ? 
nec legitimus dominus, ut diligas propter humanitatem et timeas propter 
disciplinam.” In IIpds ‘E8patous there is no softening of the conception, as in 
Philo’s argument (de Sacrificantibus, $) that God’s requirement is simply 
ayamrav avrov ws evepyérny, el 5¢ uh, poBetc Oar your ws &pxovra Kal Kvpiov, Kal 
dia. racGy lévar Tay els dpéoxecay dd@v Kal AaTpevey a’T@ wh wapépyws adda 
bn 7H Wuxy wemAnpwpévyn yrouns proGou kal Tov évrodGv airod repiexerOat 
kal rd Oixaca tywav. In de Decalogo, 11, he spiritualizes the fire at Sinai thus: 
Tov mupds TO pwev puwrifery 7d 5é kalew mépuxev (those who obey the divine laws 
being inwardly enlightened, those who disobey being inflamed and consumed 
by their vices), and closes the treatise (33) by enunciating his favourite doc- 
trine that God never punishes directly but only indirectly (here by Alxn, whose 
appropriate task is to punish those who disobey her liege Lord). Indeed he 
allegorizes the OT comparison of God to a flame (Quaest. tn Exod. 24” 
womrep 5é 7 PASE TWacay Thy wapaBAnfeioay SrAnv avadioxe, olTws, Bray ém- 
pornon eldixpivhs Tod Oeod évvoia TH Wuxy Wdvras Tovds érepoddéous doeBelas 
Aoyisuovs Siapbelper, KaGooroboa THY SAnv didvorav). The closest parallel to 
our passage lies in Ps.—Sol 15°% where the author declares that praise to God 
is the one security for man. Wadudv kal alvov wer’ Bors év evppootvy Kapdrds, 
Kapmov xeiléwy . . . amapxnhv xeiAdwy amd Kapdlas dcias Kal dixalas, 6 rowdy 
ravra ov garevOyjoerat els Tov aldva amd (2.2. bd) Kaxov, PAE Tupds Kal 


224 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS (XII. 28-XIII. 2. 


bpyn adlkav od~ dwera adrov, Srav éféOyn éwi apaprwrods ard mpocwrov 
kuplov. 


With this impressive sentence Mpés “EBpaious really closes, 
But the writer appends (see Introd., pp. xxviif.) a more or less 
informal postscript, with some personal messages to the com- 
munity. A handful of moral counsels (vv,'’) is followed by a 
longer paragraph (vv.816), and the closing personal messages are 
interrupted by a farewell benediction (v.?°). 


1 Let your brotherly love continue. * Never forget to be hospitable, for by 
hospitality (61a ravrns, as 121°) some have entertained angels unawares. * Re- 
member prisoners as tf you were in prison yourselves ; remember those who are 
being tll-treated (11°"), since you too are in the body. 


Neither uradedpia nor girogevia is a LXX term, though 
the broader sense of the former begins in 4 Mac 137% 26 141, 
Mevérw (cp. 619 1024 82f), though its demands might be severe at 
times (cp. Ro 12), 1 P 177; Clem. Ro 1?; Herm. Zand. 81°) ; the 
duty is laid as usual on members of the church, not specially on 
officials. In v.? a particular expression of this giAadeddia is called | 
for. ¢tdogfevia was practically an article of religion in the ancient 
world. The primary reference here in twes is to Abraham and 
Sara (Gn 181£), possibly to Manoah (Jg 13%), and even to Tobit 
(Tob 12°) ; but the point of the counsel would be caught readily 
by readers familiar with the Greek and Roman legends of divine 
visitants being entertained unawares by hospitable people, e.g. 
Hom: Odyss. xvii. 485 f. (kat te Get Seivouow éotxdtes &AXOSaTrOICL 

| ravrotor reA€Oovtes, Ertaotpwpoot ToAyas, cp. Plat. Soph. 216 B); 
Sil. Ital. vii. 173 f. (“laetus nec senserat hospes | advenisse 
deum”), and the story of Philemon and Baucis (Ovid, JZezé. 
viii. 626 f.) alluded to in Ac 1414. In the Hellenic world the 
worship of Zeus Xenios (é.g. Musonius Rufus, xv.w, 6 wept E€vous 
duxos eis Tov E€viov auapraver Aia) fortified this kindly custom. 
According to Resh Lakish (Sota, roa), Abraham planted the tree 
at Beersheba (Gn 21%) for the refreshment of wayfarers, and 
gidogevia was always honoured in Jewish tradition (e.g. Sabbath, 
127. 1, “there are six things, the fruit of which a man eats in 
this world and by which his horn is raised in the world to come: 
they are, hospitality to strangers, the visiting of the sick,” etc.). 
But there were pressing local reasons for this kindly virtue in the 
primitive church. Christians travelling abroad on business might 
be too poor to afford a local inn. Extortionate charges were 
frequent ; indeed the bad repute which innkeepers enjoyed in 
the Greek world (cp. Plato’s Zazws, 918 D) was due partly to this 
and partly also to a “general feeling against taking money for 
hospitality” (cp. Jebb’s Theophrastus, p. 94). But, in addition, 
the moral repute of inns stood low (Theophrastus, Char. 65 


XIII. 2, 3.] HOSPITALITY 225 


Sewvos 5 ravdoxetoat Kal mopvoBookjaa KTA.); there is significance 
in the Jewish tradition preserved by Josephus (Amz. v. 1. 1) 
that Rahab  zopvy (1151) kept an inn. For a Christian 
to frequent such inns might be to endanger his character, 
and this consideration favoured the practice of hospitality on 
the part of the local church, apart altogether from the discomforts 
of aninn. (“In the better parts of the empire and in the larger 
places of resort there were houses corresponding in some 
measure to the old coaching inns of the eighteenth century ; in 
the East there were the well-known caravanserais ; but for the most 
part the ancient hostelries must have afforded but undesirable 
quarters. They were neither select nor clean,” T. G. Tucker, 
Life in the Roman World, p. 20.) Some of these travellers 
would be itinerant evangelists (cp. 3 Jn °%). 

According to Philo the three wayfarers seen by Abraham did 
not at first appear divine (ot dé Oeorepas dvres Picews eAeAHOecayv), 
though later on he suspected they were either prophets or angels 
when they had promised him the birth of a son in return for his 
splendid hospitality (Advah. 22-23). “Ina wise man’s house,” 
Philo observes, ‘“‘no one is slow to practise hospitality: women 
and men, slaves and freedmen alike, are most eager to do 
setvice to strangers”; at the same time such hospitality was 
only an incident (adpepyov) and instance (detypa cadpéorartov) 
of Abraham’s larger virtue, #.e. of his piety. Josephus also 
(Ant. i. 11. 2) makes Abraham suppose the three visitors 
were human strangers, until at last they revealed themselves 
as divine angels, (Geacdpevos Tpets dyyéAous kat vopicas elvat 
£évous nowacato r avacTas Kat Tap avT@ kataxOévras mapexdret 
feviwy peradraBetv). It was ignorance of ‘the classical idiom (cp. 
Herod. i. 44, tarodegapevos tov Ecivov povéa tov mardds éAavOave 
Booxwv) in €\abov g~evicavtes, which led to the corruptions of 
é\a8ov in some Latin versions into ‘‘latuerunt,” ‘‘ didicerunt,” 
and ‘‘placuerunt.” Note the paronomasia émAavOdveoOe .. . 
€\afov, and the emphatic position of dyyédous. ‘‘ You never know 
whom you may be entertaining,” the writer means. ‘Some 
humble visitor may turn out to be for you a very dyyeAos Oecd” 
(cp. Gal 4). 

MipynoKxeoe (bear in mind, and act on your thought of) ray 
Seopiwy. Strangers come within sight; prisoners (v.°) have to 
be sought out or—if at a distance—borne in mind. Christian 
kindness to the latter, ze. to fellow-Christians arrested for some 
reason or other, took the form either of personally visiting them 
to alleviate their sufferings by sympathy and gifts (cp. Mt 25%, 
2 Ti 116), or of subscribing money (to pay their debts or, in the 
case of prisoners of war, to purchase their release), or of praying 
for them (Col 4}8 and 4%). All this formed a prominent feature 


15 


226 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS [ XIII. 8. 


of early Christian social ethics. The literature is full of tales 
about the general practice: eg. Aristid. Apfo/l, 15; Tertull. ad 
Mart. tf. and Afol. 39, with the vivid account of Lucian in the 
de Morte Peregr. 12, 13. This subject is discussed by Harnack 
in the Expansion of Early Christianity (bk. 11. ch. 3, section 5). 
Our author urges, ‘remember the imprisoned” as ouvdedepévor. 
If ws is taken in the same sense as the following ws, the meaning 
is: (a) ‘Sas prisoners yourselves,” z.e. in the literal sense, ‘‘ since 
you know what it means to be in prison”; or (4) “as im- 
prisoned,” in the metaphorical sense of Diognet. 6, Xpicriavoi 
KaTéxovTat Os év dpouvpa ta Koopo. A third alternative sense is 
suggested by LXX of 1S 18! (9 Woy ‘Iwvabay cuvedeOn TH Wox7 
Aavid), but the absence of a dative after ovvdedeuévor and the 
parallel phrase as év odpart rule it out. Probably ws is no more 
than an equivalent for woe. Christians are to regard themselves 
as one with their imprisoned fellows, in the sense of 1 Co 1276 
eire Tacxe ev pédos, cumTdcxya TavtTa TA peAy. ‘This interpreta- 
tion tallies with 1084 above (cp. Neh 13-4). It does not, however, 
imply that év odpatt, in the next clause, means “in the Body (of 
which you and your suffering fellows are alike members”); for 
év ojpate refers to the physical condition of liability to similar 
ill-usage. See Orig. ¢. Ceds. 11. 23, trav Tots év owpacr (Bouhéreau 
COnj. cwpatt) cvupBawdovrwv, and especially Philo’s words describ- 
ing some spectators of the cruelties inflicted by a revenue officer 
on his victims, as suffering acute pain, as év rots érépwy copacw 
avrot Kaxovjevot (de Spec. Leg. ili. 30). So in de Confus. Ling. 35, 
Kal TO cuumopov avyviTwv TOV Kakovxopéevwy (7.e. by exile, famine, 
and plague; cp. He 11°”) ov évdeHetoor xupiw, cdpare 

Seneca (Z. ix. 8) illustrates the disinterestedness of friendship by 
observing that the wise man does not make friends for the reason suggested 
by Epicurus, viz., to ‘‘ have someone who will sit beside him when he is ill, 
someone to assist him when he is thrown into chains or in poverty,” but 
‘*that he may have someone beside whom, in sickness, he may himself sit, 
someone whom he may set free from captivity in the hands of the enemy.” 
The former kind of friendship he dismisses as inadequate: ‘‘a man has made 
a friend who is to assist him in the event of bondage (‘adversum vincula’), 
but such a friend will forsake him as soon as the chains rattle (‘cum primum 
crepuerit catena’).” In Zf. Arist. 241, 242, when the king asks what is the 
use of kinship, the Jew replies, éav rots cuuBalvover voulfwuer aruxotce pméev 
éNatrobcbat kal kaxoTabGpev ws avrol, palverar Td cvyyeves cov loxiddy éort. 
Cicero specially praises generosity to prisoners, and charity in general, as 
being serviceable not only to individuals but to the State (de Offic. ii. 18, 
‘‘haec benignitas etiam rei publicae est utilis, redimi e servitute captos, locu- 
pletari tenuiores”’). 

4 Let marriage be held in honour by all, and keep the marriage-bed un- 
stained. God will punish the vicious and adulterous. 

5 Keep your life free from the love of money ; be content with what you 
have, for He (airés) has said, 

** Never will I fail you, never will I forsake you.” 


XIII. 4. | SEXUAL PURITY 227 


5 So that we can say confidently, 


‘* The Lord ts my helper (BonOés, cp. 218 438), J will not be afraid. 
What can men do to me?” 


As vv.!:2 echo 1024: 82. 83, y,4 drives home the zépvos of 1216, 
and vv.®-® echo the reminder of 104. Evidently (v.*), as among 
the Macedonian Christians (1 Th 4%%), giAadeAdia could be 
taken for granted more readily than sexual purity. Ttywos (sc. 
eorw as in v.5, Ro 12%, the asyndeton being forcible) 6 ydpos ép 
méotv, 2.€. primarily by all who are married, as the following 
clause explains. There may be an inclusive reference to others 
who are warned against lax views of sexual morality, but there is 
no clear evidence that the writer means to protest against an 
ascetic disparagement of marriage. Koitry is, like the classical 
Xéxos, a euphemistic term for sexual intercourse, here between 
the married ; dpiavros is used of incest, specially in Zest. Reud. 
i. 6, €ulava Koirnv Tod matpds pov: Plutarch, de Aluvits, 18, py 
OéXwy puaivey THY Koitnv Tod yevvyoavTos, etc.; but here in a 
general sense, as, ¢.g., in Wisdom: 

paKxapia 7 oTelpa 7 apiavros, 
HTS OK Eyvw KOiTHY ev TapaTTopatt, 
eeu kapmov év émioxoTy Wuydv (3}%), 
and ovre Biovs ovre ydpous Kafaports ere dvddcooveu, 
€repos 0 érepov 7 Aox@v avaipet 7H volevwv ddvva (14%). 


In mépvous yap kat potxous xrA., the writer distinguishes between 
poorxoi, 7.e. married persons who have illicit relations with other 
married persons, and zépvo. of the sexually vicious in general, 
t.é. married persons guilty of incest or sodomy as well as of 
fornication. In the former case the main reference is to the 
breach of another person’s marriage; in the latter, the pre- 
dominating idea is treachery to one’s own marriage vows. The 
possibility of wopveéa in marriage is admitted in Tob 87 (od da 
mopveiay éyo AapBavw tHv adeApyv pov Tavryv), te. Of mere 
sexual gratification! as distinct from the desire and duty of 
having children, which Jewish and strict Greek ethics held to be 
the paramount aim of marriage (along with mutual fellowship) ; 
but this is only one form of zopveia. In the threat xpwvet (as in 
10°) 6 @eds, the emphasis is on 6 @eds. “Longe plurima pars 
scortatorum et adulterorum est sine dubio, quae effugit notitiam 
iudicum mortalium . . . magna pars, etiamsi innotescat, tamen 
poenam civilem et disciplinam ecclesiasticam vel effugit vel 
leuissime persentiscit ” (Bengel). 


This is another social duty (cp. Philo, de Decalogo, 24). In view of the 
Epicurean rejection of marriage (e.g. Epict. ili. 7. 19), which is finely 


1 un év rade éwiOuylas, as Paul would say (1 Th 4°). 


228 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS [XIII. 4, 5. 


answered by Antipater of Tarsus (Stob. Flordleg. Ixvii. 25: 6 evyerhs kal 
eUiuxos véos .. . Oewpav didre rédetos olkos Kal Blos ovK &AXAws SdvaTaL 
yevéoOat, } pera. ‘yuvatxds kal réxywy xrTXd.), as well as of current ascetic 
tendencies (e.¢., I Ti 4°), there may have been a need of vindicating marriage, 
but the words here simply maintain the duty of keeping marriage vows 
unbroken. The writer is urging chastity, not the right and duty of any 
Christian to marry. Prejudices born of the later passion for celibacy led to 
the suppression of the inconvenient év mdot (om. 38. 460. 623. 1836. 1912” 
Didymus, Cyril Jerus., Eus., Athan., Epiphanius, Thdt.). The sense is 
hardly affected, whether ydp (x A D* M P lat sah boh) or 6é (C D° W 6 syr 
arm eth Clem., Eus., Didymus, Chrys.) is read, although the latter would 
give better support to the interpretation of the previous clause as an anti- 
ascetic maxim. 


A warning against greed of gain (vv.® ®) follows the warning 
against sexual impurity. There may bea link of thought between 
them. For the collocation of sensuality and the love of money, 
see Lpict. il. 7. 21, col KaAnv yuvatka dhaiverOat pydepiay 4 THY 
ony, Kadov maida pydéva, Kaddov dpyvpopa pnbév, xpiouopa pnOev: 
Test. Jud. 18, puddkacbe ard THs Topveias Kal THs PiAapyupias... 
6Tt Taira... ovx adie avopa éAenoat Tov wAnciov avrov, and 
Philo’s (de Post. Caint, 34) remark, that all the worst quarrels, 
public and private, are due to greedy craving for 7 edpmopdias 
yevarkos 7) xpnuatwv «tA. In de Adbrah. 26, he attributes the 
sensuality of Sodom to its material prosperity. Lucian notes the 
same connexion in JVigrin. 16 (cuveirépyeroar yap poryeia Kai 
diAapyupia xtX., the love of money having been already set as 
the source of such vices). In 1 Co 51% Paul brackets of zdpvor 
with of wAcovéxtat, and mAcovegia (cp. 1 Th 4°) as selfishness 
covers adultery as well as grasping covetousness. But the 
deeper tie between the two sins is that the love of luxury and 
the desire for wealth open up opportunities of sensual indulgence. 
In injuries to other people, Cicero observes (de Offic. i. 7. 24), 
“‘Jatissime patet avaritia.” When Longinus describes the deterior- 
ating effects of this passion or vice in character (de Sudblim. 44), 
he begins by distinguishing it from mere love of pleasure ; 
dirapyupia pev voonua jkporoidy, ptAydovia Oo ayevverraror. 
Then he proceeds to analyse the working of iAapyvpia in life, 
its issue in UBpts, wapavopia, and avaroxvvtia. 

*"Adiddpyupos (the rebel Appianus tells Marcus Aurelius, in 
OP. xxxiil. 10, 11, that his father TO pev mparov 7 iy pirdcogos, TO 
Sedrepov aprdpyrpos, TO TpliTov pirdyabos) 6 TpdTos: (in sense of 

‘mores,” as often, eg., M. Aurelius, 1. 16, kai was 6 tovodros 
TpOTOS). FAbRoviLevot is the plur. pte. after a noun (as in 2 Co 17, 
Ro 12%), and with tots mapodow reproduces a common Greek 
phrase for contentment, e.g. Ze/es, vil. 7, GAN’ Hyets od Svvdpeba 
apketo bat Tois Tapovovy, Gravy Kal Tpupy Tord SidGmev, and xxvili. 31, 
Kal pn exwv ovK érurobynoes GAAA Biden apKxovpevos Tots rapodvorr. 
The feature here is the religious motive adduced in atris yap 


XIII. 5, 6.] CONFIDENCE IN GOD 229 


eipynxev (of God as usual, ¢eg., 11%), a phrase which (cp. Ac 20% 
avros elev) recalls the Pythagorean atrés eda (‘thus said the 
Master”). The quotation 08 pi ce dvO 068° of py ce éyxataNitw is 
a popular paraphrase of Jos 1° or Gn 28) (cp. Dt 318, 1 Ch 287) 
which the writer owes to Philo (de Confus. Ling. 32), who quotes 
it exactly in this form as a Ady.ov Tod (Aew Geod peaTov HuEporyTos, 
but simply as a promise that God will never leave the human 
soul to its own unrestrained passions. The combination of the 
aor. subj. with the first od my and the reduplication of the 
negative (for ovd od py, cp. Mt 2474) amount to a strong 
asseveration. Note that the writer does not appeal, as Josephus 
does, to the merits of the fathers (Aztig. xl. 5.7, Tov pev Oedv 
lore pvyjun tov matépwv “ABpdpov Kal “Iodkov kal “IaxwPov 
TapapevovTa Kal dud THS exeivwv SiKacoovvys ovK eyKataheimovTa TV 
brép yuav mpovo.ay) in assuring his readers that they will not be 
left forlorn by God. 

’"Eyxaradelrw (so all the uncials except D) may be simply an ortho- 
graphical variant of the true reading éyxaraXlrw (aorist subj.). In Dt 316 
the A text runs od uy ce avy odd’ ov ce éyxaraXelry, in Jos 1° ovK éyxaradelrw 
ge ovde brepdYoual ce, and in Gn 28" ot uy oe éyxaradelrw. The promise 


originally was of a martial character. But, as Keble puts it (Chréstzan Year, 
‘‘The Accession ”) : 


‘Not upon kings or priests alone 
the power of that dear word is spent; 
it chants to all in softest tone 
the lowly lesson of content.” 

"Qate (v.°) Bappodvras (on the evidence for this form, which 
Plutarch prefers to the Ionic variant @apceivy, cp. Cronert’s 
Memoria Graeca Herculanensts, 1337) jpas (om. M, accidentally) 
héyew. What God says to us moves us to say something to 
ourselves, This quotation from Ps 118° is exact, except that 
the writer, for the sake of terseness, omits the kat (=s0) before 
o8 doByOjcopar, which is reinserted by 8° ADK LM syr™' etc. 
For the phrase @appotvras Aéyew, see Pr 171 (Wisdom) éxi de 
mvAais Toews Pappotoa déyer: and for BonOds and Gappetv in con- 
junction, see Xen. Cyr. Viti. 255 26, érevd1) 5 ék Iepoay Bonbes 
Hpiv eoppnOys . . » vov & av otras éxopev Os dv pev Gol Guws Kal 
év TH moAcpia OvTes Gappodjpev. Epictetus tells a man who is 
tempted (ii. 18. 29), rot Geod peuvnoo, éxetvov émxadod BonOov Kai 
mapaoraryv. This is the idea of the psalm-quotation here. 
Courage is described in Galen (de H. et Plat. decr. vii. 2) as the 
knowledge dv xpi Oappety 7) 7 Oappetv, a genuinely Stoic defini- 
tion; and Alkibiades tells, in the Symposium (221 A), how he 
came upon Sokrates and Laches retreating during the Athenian 
defeat at Delium kai idov edOds mapaxeAcvomai te adroty Oappeiy, 
Kal €Xeyov Ott ovK aohei~w aitd. In the touching prayer pre- 
served in the Acta Pauli (xlii.), Thekla cries, 6 Oeds pov Kai Tod 


230 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS [XIII. 6, 7. 


oixov Tovtov, Xpiaté Incod 6 vids rod Geod, 6 éwol Bonfos év pvraky, 
Bonbos eri Hyepdvev, Bonbds ev wupi, BonGos év Onpiors. 

According to Pliny (Z/. ix. 30: ‘‘ primum est autem suo esse contentum, 
deinde, quos praecipue scias indigere sustentantem fouentemque orbe quodam 
societatis ambire’’) a man’s first duty is to be content with what he has ; his 
second, to go round and help all in his circle who are most in need. 
Epictetus quotes a saying of Musonius Rufus: od @édets wedeTav apKetoOar TY 
5edouévw ; (i. 1.27) 3 but this refers to life in general, not to money or property 
in particular. The argument of our author is that instead of clinging to their 
possessions and setting their hearts on goods (1o0*4), which might still be 
taken from them by rapacious pagans, they must realize that having God 
they have enough. He will never allow them to be utterly stripped of the 
necessaries of life. Instead of trying to refund themselves for what they had 
lost, let them be content with what is left to them and rely on God to 
preserve their modest all; he will neither drop nor desert them. 


Hitherto the community has been mainly (see on 1214f) 
addressed as a whole. Now the writer reminds them of the 
example of their founders, dead and gone, adding this to the 
previous list of memories (121), 


7 Remember your leaders, the men who spoke the word of God to you; look 
back upon the close of thetr career, and copy thetr faith. . 


Mynpovevete Tay Hyounévwv Sudv oitives (since they were the 
men who) éAdAnoay bpiv tov Adyov tod Geos. ‘The special function 
of these primitive apostles and prophets was to preach the 
gospel (cp. 1 Co 1!”) with the supernatural powers of the Spirit. 
Then the writer adds a further title to remembrance, their con- 
sistent and heroic life; they had sealed their testimony with 
their (Gv xrA.) blood. “Hyovpevos, like épywv, was.a substantival 
formation which had a wide range of meaning; here it is 
equivalent to “president” or “leader” (cp. £pp. Apollon. ii. 69, 
dvdpas Tovs Hyoupevous tuav = your leading citizens, or prominent 
men, and Ac 157%).4. It was they who had founded the church 
by their authoritative preaching; éAdAncav tyty tov Adyov rod 
Geod recalls the allusion to the gwrypia which ind tv dxovcavtwv 
(z.e. Jesus) eis Huds éBeBarhOn (2°). The phrase denotes, in 
primitive Christianity (e.g. Did. 44 where the church-member is 
bidden remember with honour tot Aadodytos cou tov Adyov Tod 
Oeod), the central function of the apostolic ministry as the 
declaration and interpretation of the divine Adyos. These men 
had died for their faith ; €kBaous here, as in Wis 217 (ra ev éxBaoe 
aitov), is, like €£od0s, a metaphor for death as the close of life, 
evidently a death remarkable for its witness to faith. They had 
laid down their lives as martyrs. This proves that the allusion 
in 12* does not exclude some martyrdoms in the past history of 
the community, unless the reference here is supposed to mean 


1JIn Zp. Arist. 310, of the headmen of the Jewish community at 
Alexandria. 


XIII. 7. | GOOD EXAMPLES 231 


no more than that they died as they had lived xara rior (1115), 
without giving up their faith. 

In Egypt, during the Roman period, ‘‘a liturgical college of mpeoBuvrepoar 
or tyyoUmevor was at the head of each temple” (GCP. i. 127), the latter term 


being probably taken from its military sense of ‘‘ officers” (¢.g. tyeudves TO 
éiw rdtewr). 


"Avabewpodvtes is “‘scanning closely, looking back (dva-) 
on”; and dvactpody is used in this sense even prior to Polybius ; 
e.g. Magn. 46% 44 (iii Bc.) and Magn. 165° (i A.D.) dua rH Tod 
nOovs kocp.ov avactpopyyv. As for puretode, the verb never occurs 
in the LXX except as a v./. (B*) for éuionoas in Ps 31%, and 
there in a bad sense. The good sense begins in Wis 4? 
(rapotoay Te pipodvrat aityy), so far as Hellenistic Judaism goes, 
and 1 in 4 Mac 978 (utpnoacde pe) ¥37 (puna defo. TOUS TpEls TOUS 
él THs Supias veavioxovs) it is used of imitating a personal 
example, as here. In the de Congressu Erudit. 13, Philo argues 
that the learner listens to what his teacher says, whereas a man 
who acquires true wisdom by practice and meditation (6 éé 
aokynoe. TO KaAOV GAAG pt) OidacKadrta KTwpevos) attends ov Tots 
Aeyouévors GAAG Tots A€yovar, ppovpevos TOV éxeivwy Biov év Tats 
Kata pepos avemiAnmtTos mpdgeot. He is referring to living 
examples of goodness, but, as in de Vita Mos. i. 28, he points out 
that Moses made his personal character a zapddevypa tots 
eJéXovor ppeto Gat, This stimulus of heroic memories belonging 
to one’s own group is noted by Quintilian (Jmstit. Orat. xii, 2. 31) 
as essential to the true orator: “‘quae sunt antiquitus dicta ac 
facta praeclare et: nosse et animo semper agitare conveniet. 
Quae profecto nusquam plura maioraque quam in nostrae 
Civitatis monumentis reperientur. . .. Quantum enim Graeci 
praeceptis valent, tantum Romani, quod est maius, exemplis.” 
Marcus Aurelius recollects the same counsel: éy rots rév “Ext- 
KoUpEtov YPappace mapayyehpa € way adhd TVVEXOS bropuvyoKeo Gat TOV 
Tadatay TOS TOV GpeTH ypNoapévwv (xi. 26). 

Human leaders may pass away, but Jesus Christ, the supreme 
object and subject of their faithful preaching, remains, and 
remains the same; no novel additions to his truth are required, 
least of all innovations which mix up his spiritual religion with 
what is sensuous and material. 


8 Jesus Christ is always the same, yesterday, to-day, and for ever. *% Never 
let yourselves be carried away with a variety of novel doctrines ; for the right 
thing ts to have one’s heart strengthened by grace, not by the eating of food— 
that has never been any use to those who have had recourse to it. ™ Our 
(éxouev as 4)°) altar ts one of which the worshippers have no right to eat. 
11 For the bodies of the animals whose ‘‘ blood is taken into the holy Place” by 
the highpriest as a ‘‘sin-offering, are burned outside the camp” ; and so 
Jesus also suffered outside the gate, in order to sanctify the people (cp. 107) dy 
his own blood (9'*). 1 Let us go to him “‘outside the camp,” then, bearing 


232 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS [ XIII. 8, 9. 


his obloguy “(for we have no lasting city here below, we seek the City to 
come). \* And by him “‘let us’ ’ constantly ‘offer praise to God” as our 
“‘ sacrifice,” that is, ‘‘the fruit of lips” that celebrate his Name. 16 Do not 
forget (ui émdavOdverde, as in v.*) deneficence and charity either; these are 
the kind of sacrifices that are acceptable to God. 

V.8 connects with what precedes and introduces what follows. 
"Ex0es 1 refers to his life on earth (2? 5”) and includes the service 
of the original syovpevor; it does not necessarily imply a long 
retrospect. Znpepoy as in 3), and 6 adrés as in 1%, The finality 
of the revelation in Jesus, sounded at the opening of the homily 
(11), resounds again here. He is never to be superseded ; he 
never needs to be supplemented. Hence (v.%) the warning 
against some new theology about the media of forgiveness and 
fellowship, which, it is implied, infringes the all-sufficient efficacy 
of Jesus Christ. Atdaxats (62) morxtdats (24 in good sense) kat 
févars ph mapadeperbe. Tlapapépeobau (cp. Jude !*) is never used in 
this metaphorical sense (swayed, swerved) in the LXX, where it 
is always literal, and the best illustration of €évais in the sense of 
‘foreign to” (the apostolic faith) is furnished by the author of 
the epistle to Diognetus (11+), who protests, ob €€va 6miAG.. . 
dAXAG arocroAwy yevopevos pabyriHs yivopat SiddcKaXros eOvav. Such 
notions he curtly pronounces useless, év ots odk @pednOyaay oi 
mepi@atouvtres, where év ols goes with mepurarotyres; they have 
never been of any use in mediating fellowship with God for 
those who have had recourse to them. It is: pret the tone of 
Jesus in Mk 738, 

IlapagépecOe was altered (under the influence of Eph 4!*) into zepupépec be 
(K LW 2. 5. 88. 330. 378. 440. 491. 47: 642. 919. 920. 1867. 1872. 1908. 
arm sah). Tlepurarjoavres (x° C D° K L M P syr®*! arm Orig. Chrys, etc.) 
and mepirarobyres (x* A D* 1912 lat) are variants which are substantially the 


same in meaning, wepirarety év being used in its common sense=living in the 
sphere of (Eph 2" etc.), having recourse to. 


The positive position is affirmed in kadéy xrA. (addy, as in 
1 Co 7}, Ro 147! etc.). ‘*Kadds... denotes that kind of good- 
ness which is at once seen to be good” (Hort on 1 P 2!%), ze, 
by those who have a right instinct. The really right and good 
course is xdpitt BeBarodcbat thy Kapdtay, zc. either to have one’s 
heart strengthened, or to be strengthened in heart (kapdéav, accus. 
of reference). Bread sustains our physical life (dpros xapdiav 
avOpwrov orypite, Ps 104)), but xapdia here means more than 
vitality ; it is the inner life of the human soul, which God’s yapus 
alone can sustain, and God’s xépis in Jesus Christ is everything 
(2° etc.). But what does this contrast mean? The explanation 
is suggested in the next passage (vv.0-16), which flows out of 


1 The forms vary ; but this, the Attic spelling, has the best repute upon 
the whole (see W. G. Rutherford’s Mew Phrynichus, pp. 370f.), and strong 
support here in x A C* D* M. 


XIII. 9.] FOOD AND FAITH 233 


what has just been said. The various novel doctrines were 
connected in some way with Bpwpata. So much is clear. The 
difficulty is to infer what the Bpwpara were. There is a touch of 
scorn for such a motley, unheard of, set of dudayaé. The writer 
does not trouble to characterize them, but his words imply that 
they were many-sided, and that their main characteristic was a 
preoccupation with Bpwyara. There is no reference to the 
ancient regulations of the Hebrew ritual mentioned in 9!°; this 
would only be tenable on the hypothesis, for which there is no 
evidence, that the readers were Jewish Christians apt to be 
fascinated by the ritual of their ancestral faith, and, in any case, 
such notions could not naturally be described as zrouxiAau xal 
gévat. We must look in other directions for the meaning of this 
enigmatic reference. (a) The new didaxaé may have included 
ascetic regulations about diet as aids to the higher life, like the 
évtdApata kat dwacKkariat tv avOpuHrwv which disturbed the 
Christians at Colossé. Partly owing to Gnostic syncretism, 
prohibitions of certain foods (adréxecOar Bpwudrwv, 1 Ti 4°) were 
becoming common in some circles, in the supposed interests of 
spiritual religion. ‘‘We may assume,” says Pfleiderer, one of 
the representatives of this view (pp. 278f.), ‘‘a similar Gnostic 
spiritualism, which placed the historical Saviour in an inferior 
position as compared with angels or spiritual powers who do not 
take upon them flesh and blood, and whose service consists in 
mystical purifications and ascetic abstinences.” (4) They may 
also have included such religious sacraments as were popularized 
in some of the mystery-cults, where worshippers ate the flesh of 
a sacrificial victim or consecrated elements which represented the 
deity. Participation in these festivals was not unknown among 
some ultra-liberal Christians of the age. It is denounced by 
Paul in 1 Co 1o, and may underlie what the writer has already 
said in 10%, Why our author did not speak outright of eidwAddura, 
we cannot tell; but some such reference is more suitable to the 
context than (a), since it is sacrificial meals which are in question. 
He is primarily drawing a contrast between the various cult-feasts 
of paganism, which the readers feel they might indulge in, not 
only with immunity, but even with spiritual profit, and the 
Christian religion, which dispensed with any such participation. 
(c) Is there also a reference to the Lord’s supper, or to the 
realistic sense in which it was being interpreted, as though 
participation in it implied an actual eating of the sacrificial body 
of the Lord? This reference is urged by some critics, especially 
by F. Spitta (Zur Geschichte u. Litteratur des Urchristentums, 
i. pp. 325 f.) and O. Holtzmann (in Zettschrift fiir die neutest. 
Wissenschaft, x. pp. 251-260). Spitta goes wrong by misinterpret- 
ing v.10 as though the o@pa of Christ implied a sacrificial meal 


234 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS [ XIII. 9, 10. 


from which Jewish priests were excluded. Holtzmann rightly 
sees that the contrast between xdpis and Bpdpara implies, for 
the latter, the only Bpapa possible for Christians, viz. the Lord’s 
body as a food. What the writer protests against is the rising 
conception of the Lord’s supper as a dayetv ro capa Tov XpioTov. 
On the day of Atonement in the OT ritual, to which he refers, 
there was no participation in the flesh of the sacrificial victim ; - 
there could not be, in the nature of the case (v.14). So, he 
argues, the c@ua Xpiorod of our sacrifice cannot be literally eaten, 
as these neo-sacramentarians allege; any such notion is, to him, 
a relapse upon the sensuous, which as a spiritual idealist he 
despises as ‘‘a vain thing, fondly invented.” A true insight into 
the significance of Jesus, such as he has been trying to bring out 
in what he has written, such as their earlier leaders themselves 
had conveyed in their own way, would reveal the superfluousness 
and irrelevance of these didayaé. As the writer is alluding to 
what is familiar, he does not enter into details, so that we have 
to guess at his references. But the trend of thought in vv.!% is 
plain. In real Christian worship there is no sacrificial meal ; 
the Christian sacrifice is not one of which the worshippers 
partake by eating. This is the point of v.® The writer 
characteristically illustrates it from the OT ritual of atonement- 
day, by showing how the very death of Jesus outside the city of 
Jerusalem fulfilled the proviso in that ritual (vv." 1") that the 
sacrifice must not be eaten. Then he finds in this fact about 
the death of Jesus a further illustration of the need for unworldli- 
ness (vv.}% 14), Finally, in reply to the question, “Then have 
Christians no sacrifices to offer at all?” he mentions the two 
standing sacrifices of thanksgiving and charity (vv. 16), both 
owing their efficacy to Christ. Inwardness is the dominating 
thought of the entire paragraph. God’s grace in Jesus Christ 
works upon the soul; no external medium like food is required 
to bring us into fellowship with him; it is vain to imagine that 
by eating anything one can enjoy communion with God. Our 
Lord stands wholly outside the material world of sense, outside 
things touched and tasted; in relationship to him and him 
alone, we can worship God. The writer has a mystical or 
idealistic bent, to which the sacramental idea is foreign. He 
never alludes to the eucharist; the one sacrament he notices is 
baptism. A ritual meal as the means of strengthening communion 
with God through Christ does not appeal to him in the slightest 
degree. It is not thus that God’s xdpus is experienced. 

The clue to v.?° lies in the obvious fact that the @uctacrjptov 
and the oxy belong to the same figurative order. In our — 
spiritual or heavenly oxyv7, the real oxyvy of the soul, there is 
indeed a Ouctacryptov é€ of (partitive ; cp. Ta eis Tov icpod eo Oiov- 


XIII. 10-12. | UNWORLDLINESS 235 


aw, t Co g!8) dayety (emphatic by position) odk exouoww éfouciay } 
(x Co 94) ot TH oxyvy Aatpedovres (Aatpevew with dative as in 8°). 
It makes no difference to the sense whether of . . . Aatpevovres 
means worshippers (9° 10?) or priests (85), and the writer does not 
allegorize 6vovacrypiov as Philo does (e.g. in de Leg. Alleg. i. 15, ris 
KaGapas Kal dusavrov pivews THs avapepovons TA Guwopa TA ew, 
avry O&€ éotu TO Ovovacrypiov). His point is simply this, that the 
Christian sacrifice, on which all our relationship to God depends, 
is not one that involves or allows any connexion with a meal. To 
prove how impossible such a notion is, he (v.!4) cites the ritual 
regulation in Lv 16%’ for the disposal of the carcases of the two 
animals sacrificed wept tijs duaptias (dv 76 aipa clonveyOn eéidac- 
acbat ev TO ayiw eEoicovew avira Ew THs TapemBoArTs Kal KaTaKavoov- 
ow avTaévrvpt). Fora moment the writer recalls his main argument 
in chs. 7-103 in v.!0 Christ is regarded as the victim or sacrifice 
(cp. mpooeveyOeis in g*5), but here the necessities of the case 
involve the activity of the Victim. Ad kat “Inoods xrA. (v.12). 
The parallel breaks down at one point, of course; his body was 
not burned up.? But the real comparison lies in é&@ tis médys 
(sc. THS TapeuPodrrs, as Ex 327-27), ‘The Peshitto and 436 make 
the reference explicit by reading woAews, which seems to have 
been known to Tertullian (adv. Jud. 14, “extra civitatem”). The 
fact that Jesus was crucified outside Jerusalem influenced the 
synoptic transcripts of the parable in Mk 128= Mt 2199=Lk 2035, 
Mark’s version, amextewvav atrov kat é€Badov atrov ew Tod apmed- 
evos, was altered into (é&€Badorv) éxBarovres abrov eEw Tod apreAGvos 
(kal) daréxrevvay. . Crucifixion, like other capital punishments, in 
the ancient world was inflicted outside a city. To the writer this 
fact seems intensely significant, rich in symbolism. So much so 
that his mind hurries on to use it, no longer as a mere confirma- 
tion of the negative in v.!9, but as a positive, fresh call to unworldli- 
ness. All such sensuous ideas as those implied in sacrificial 
meals mix up our religion with the very world from which we 
ought, after Jesus, to be withdrawing. We meet Jesus outside 
all this, not inside it. In highly figurative language (v.18), he 
therefore makes a broad appeal for an unworldly religious fellow- 
ship, such as is alone in keeping with the yapis of God in Jesus 
our Lord. 

Toivuy (beginning a sentence as in Lk 20%8 roivuy arddore x7X., 
instead of coming second in its classical position), let us join 
Jesus €& tis mapepBodjs, for he is living. The thought of the 

1 The omission of éfovclay by D* M and the Old Latin does not affect the 
sense ; @xe.v then has the same meaning as in 61°, 

2 The blood, not the body, of the victim mattered in the atonement ritual. 
Hence, in our writer’s scheme of thought, as Peake observes, ‘‘ while he fully 


recognises the fact of the Resurrection of Christ, he can assign it no place in 
his argument or attach to it any theological significance.” 


236 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS [XIII. 18-15. 


metaphor is that of Paul’s admonition pa cvvoxnpatilerde to 
ai@ve tovTw (Ro 12”), and the words tév dverdropdv adrod épovtes 
recall the warnings against false shame (1126 127), just as the 
following (v.14) reason, od yap éxopey O8e (in the present outward 
order of things) pevoucay! modu GAAG Thy péeAdoucay émiLntoiper 
recalls the ideas of 11101416. The appeal echoes that of 4! 
oTrovodowpev ovv eine Get eis exetvny THY Katamavowv. It is through ~ 
the experiences of an unsettled and insulted life that Christians 
must pass, if they are to be loyal to their Lord. That is, the 
writer interprets ¢€w tijs mrapepPohijs figuratively (“ Egrediamur 
et nos a commercio mundi huius,” Erasmus). Philo had already 
done so (cp. specially guod. det. pot. 44), in a mystical sense: 
pakpayv Svockiles TOV TWMATLKOU OTpAToOTédoV, MOVs AV OUTWS éArricoas 
ixéerys kat Oepamreutys ecco Oat TéeAcLos Peov. Similarly in de Lbrietate, 
25, commenting on Ex 33’, he explains that by év r@ otparorédw 
( = év rp wapenfoAnH) Moses meant allegorically év 76 wera odparos 
fiw, the material interests of the worldly life which must be for- 
saken if the soul is to enjoy the inward vision of God. Such is 
the renunciation which the writer here has in view. It is the 
thought in 2 Clem. 5! (c6ev, ddeAol, katarcipavtes THY mapoiKiav 
TOU KOapoV TovTOY ToLnTwLEY TO OéeAnua TOU KadécayTos Has, Kal 
py poBynaue efedOeiv ex Tod Kdopov Tovrov) and 6° (ov dura- 
pea trav dvo piror elvar det O€ Nuads TovTwW arorasapéevous éxeivw 
xpacGar). Only, our author weaves in the characteristic idea 
of the shame which has to be endured in such an anworldhy 
renunciation. 

The next exhortation in v. (dvapépwper) catches up éepxw- 
pefa, as 8. abtod carries on zpos adrév. For once applying sacri- 
ficial language to the Christian life, he reminds his readers again 
of the sacrifice of thanksgiving. The phrase xapmév yethéwv ex- 
plains (toét’ €or) the sense in which @uoia aivésews is to be 
taken; it is from the LXX mistranslation (kaprov yeréwv) of 
Hos 14° where the true text has O08 (bullocks) instead of "5 


(fruit). In dpodoyotvtwy 7H dydpatt attod, duoAoyety is used in 
the sense of égouodoyeteGat by an unusual? turn of expression. 
The évoya means, as usual, the revealed Spooks Probably 
there 1 is an unconscious recollection of Ps 548 (e€oporoyyoopat TO 
ovopart cov) ; Ovcia aivésews® is also from the psalter (e.g. 
5ol* 28), "Avadéepew elsewhere in the NT is only used of spiritual 
sacrifices in the parallel passage I P 2° dvevéyxae TVEVMLATLKAS 
duaias ev poo deKTous bea dua “Inoov Xpiorov. We have no sacri- 


1 In the sense of Aeneas (Verg. Aen. iii. 85, 86, ‘‘da moenia fessis | et genus 
et mansuram urbem”’). Note the assonance uévouoay - . » MéANOVTAY, 

2 But ouodoyety rive occurs in 3 Es 4° 5°8 (A). 

3In the LXX éfouordynoats is rene preferred to alveots as an equiva: 
lent for An. 


XIII. 15, 16.] CHRISTIAN SACRIFICES 237 
\ 


ficial meals, the writer implies ; we do not need them. Nor have 
we any sacrifices—except spiritual ones. (The ovv after 8: adroi, 
which x° A C D° M vg syr®*! boh arm eth Orig. Chrys. ete. re- 
tain, is omitted by 8* D* P W vt syr’®; but 8* D* om. ody also 
1 Co 6’,as D in Ro 7”). The thought of 1278 is thus expanded, 
with the additional touch that thankfulness to God is inspired 
by our experience of Jesus (80 atrov, as Col 31" edyapiorotvtes TA 
Ge warpi d¢ advrod); the phrase is a counterpart of 8a tod 
dpxtepéws in v.". This thank-offering is to be made d:a avrés 
(s¢. xpdvov), instead of at stated times, for, whatever befalls us, we 
owe God thanks and praise (cp. 1 Th 516). The Mishna (cp. 
Berachoth 5*) declares that he must be silenced who only calls 
upon God’s name with thankfulness in the enjoyment of good 
(Berachoth 58 jnix pprvin OD OND Wo DN sv OY. . . Wis). 

The religious idea of thanksgiving was prominent in several quarters. 
According to Fronto (Loeb ed. i. p. 22) thank-offerings were more acceptable 
to the gods than sin-offerings, as being more disinterested: uavrewy dé ratdés 
gacw Kal Tots Oeots Hdlovs elvat Ovoidv Tas xapiornplouvs 7 Tas metArxlous. 
Philo had taught (de Plant. 30) that evxapiorlia is exceptionally sacred, and 
that towards God it must be an inward sacrifice: dew 5¢ ov eveote yrnolws 
evyapioTjoat O¢ dy voulfovew oi woddol KatacKkevdv avabnudrwv Ovordv—ovde 
yap cvytras 6 Kéopos lepdv dkidxpewy Gv yévoro mpos Thy TovTOU TLLV—GAAA SE 
éralywv kal tuvwv, ovx ods ) yeywvds doerac Pwvh, GANA ods 6 deLvdhs Kal 
KaOapwraros vovs émnxjoe kai avauédhWe. He proceeds (2bzd. 33) to dwell 
on the meaning of the name Judah, ds épunveverar kuplw éfouordyyots. Judah 
was the last (Gn 29%) son of Leah, for nothing could be added to praise of 
God, nothing excels 6 evAoy&v rév Gedy vods. This tallies with the well-known 
rabbinic saying, quoted in Tanchuma, 55. 2: ‘‘in the time of messiah all 
sacrifices will cease, but the sacrifice of thanksgiving will not cease; all 
prayers will cease, but praises will not cease” (on basis of Jer 33! and Ps 
56'%). The praise of God as the real sacrifice of the pious is frequently noted 
in the later Judaism (e.g. 2 Mac 10’). 


In v.16 the writer notes the second Christian sacrifice of 
charity. Edmowia, though not a LXX term, is common in 
Hellenistic Greek, especially in Epictetus, eg. Fragm. 15 (ed. 
Schenk), éri xpyordryte kai evrrouig; Fragm. 45, ovdev Kpetooor 

evouias (where the context suggests ‘ beneficence ”). 
Kowwvia in the sense of charity or contributions had been 
already used by Paul (2 Co 9}8 etc.). To share with others, 
to impart to them what we possess, is one way of worshipping 
God. The three great definitions of worship or religious service 
in the NT (here, Ro 121? and Ja 17’) are all inward and 
ethical; what lies behind this one is the fact that part of the 
food used in ancient OT sacrifices went to the support of the 
priests, and part was used to provide meals for the poor. 
Charitable relief was bound up with the sacrificial system, for such 
parts of the animals as were not burnt were devoted to these 
beneficent purposes. An equivalent must be provided in our 


238 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS [ XIII. 16. 


spiritual religion, the writer suggests; if we have no longer any 
animal sacrifices, we must carry on at any rate the charitable 
element in that ritual. This is the force of ph émdavOdveode. 
Contributions, ¢eg., for the support of myovpevor, who were not 
priests, were unknown in the ancient world, and had to be 
explicitly urged as a duty (cp. 1 Co 9®14), Similarly the needs 


of the poor had to be met by voluntary sacrifices, by which - 


alone, in a spiritual religion, God could be satisfied—rotatrats 
(perhaps including the sacrifice of praise as well as eizoia and 
kowwvia) Quotas edapectettar (cp. 11> 6 1278) 6 Beds. This counsel 
agrees with some rabbinic opinions (e.g. T. B. Sukkah, 594: ‘‘he 
who offers alms is greater than all sacrifices”). The special duty 
of supporting the priesthood is urged in Sir 73%, but our author 
shows no trace of the theory that almsgiving in general was not 
only superior to sacrifices but possessed atoning merit before 
God (Sir 3)4 eAXenpootvn yap marpos ob émtAnoOyoerat, Kai dyti 
dpaptiav mpocavoixodopynOyoerat oor). In the later rabbinic 
theology, prayer, penitence, the study of the Torah, hospitality, 
charity, and the like were regarded as sacrifices equivalent to 
those which had been offered when the temple was standing. 
Thus Rabbi Jochanan b. Zakkai (cp. Schlatter’s Jochanan ben 
Zakkat, pp. 39f.) consoled himself and his friends with the 
thought, derived from Hos 6%, that in the practice of charity 
they still possessed a valid sacrifice for sins; he voiced the 
conviction also (e.g. b. baba bathra 10>) that charity (np?¥) won 
forgiveness for pagans as the sin-offering did for Israel. In the 
Ep. Barnabas (27) the writer quotes Jer 72% 28 (Zec 817) as a 
warning to Christians against Jewish sacrifices (aicbdvec bar ouv 
dheiXopev THY yvopany TIS d-yabwovvys TOU TAT pos Hav or npv 
Neyer, GArwy judas py Spoiws wAavwpevovs exelvors Cyreiv, TOs 
mpoodywpev aiT@), but he quotes Ps 511% as the description of 
the ideal sacrifice. 

The tendency in some circles of the later Judaism to spiritualize sacrifice 


in general and to insist on its motive and spirit is voiced in a passage like 
Jth-roter: 

bpn yap éx OepeNlwy ov Bdacw carevOrjoerat, 

métpat & ard mporwmrov gov ws Knpds TakjcovTat* 

ére O€ Tots PoBovpévas oe ov evidaTevers avTois* 

Sri puxpoyv maca Ovola els dcunv evwolas, 

kal é\dx.oTov wav oréap els d\oKa’Twud cot" 

6 dé PoBovmevos Tov KUptov péyas dia mavrds. 


Also in a number of statements from various sources, of which that in Zp. 
Arist. 234 (ri uéyworév éore Sdéns ; 6 5¢ ele’ 7d Tidy Tdv Bedv* TodTo & éoriv 
ov ddpos ode Ovolats, GAAA Wuxis Kabapdryte Kal dtadyWews oolas) may be 
cited as a fair specimen. The congruous idea of bloodless sacrifices was 
common in subsequent Christianity. Thus the martyr Apollonius Woe 
Apollonit, 445 Conybeare’s Monuments of Early Christianity, pp. 47-48) 
tells the magistrate, ‘‘I expected . . . that thy heart would bear fruit, and 


XIII. 16, 17. | CHURCH LEADERS 239 


that thou wouldst worship God, the Creator of all, and unto Him continually 
offer thy prayers by means of compassion ; for compassion shown to men by 
men is a bloodless sacrifice and holy unto God.” So Jerome’ s comment runs 
on Ps 154 od wh owaydyw ras owaywyds airav é aludrwv. Luvd-ywv, 
gnoiv, cvvayuyas éx TeV eOvadv, od St aludrwy ta’ras cuvdéw' TodT gor, ov 
Tapackevdow Oud THs vous moe mpocépxerOat AaTpelas, du’ alvécews Sé waddov 
kai THs dvaudKxrov Ovolas (Anecdota Maredsolana, iii. 3. 123). Both in the 
Didache (14! kAdoare dprov kal evxapirrjoare mpocekomodoynodpevor Td 
maparTwuara buoy, Srws Kabapa 7) Ovola duev 7H) and in Justin Martyr (Dza/. 
117, mwdvras ody of dia Tov dvduaros Tov’Tou duolas, as TmapedwKev Inoots 6 
Xpiords ylveo Oat, TouTéotw éml TH edXaptorig Tov dprov Kai Tov mornplou, Tas év 
mavtTl Tomw THS yas ywouévas bro Tav Xpicriavav, rportaBwv 6 Peds waprupet 
evapéorous virdpxew avTq), the very prayers at the eucharist are called @vcla, 
but this belongs to a later stage, when the eucharist or love-feast became the 
rite round which collections for the poor, the sick, prisoners, and travelling 
visitors (vv./f-) gathered, and into which sacrificial language began to be 
poured (cp. Justin’s 4Zo/. i. 66, 67). In IlIpds ‘EBpatous we find a simpler 
and different line of practical Christianity. 


Now for a word on the living *yodmevor of the community 
(v.17), including himself (vv.1® 19), 


17 Obey your leaders, submit to them; for they (adbrol) are alive to the 
enterests of your souls, as men who will have to account for thetr trust. Let 
their work be a joy to them and not a grief—which would be a loss to yourselves. 

18 Pray for me, for Lam sure L have a clean conscience; my desire ts in 
every way to lead an honest life. © I urge you to thts (2.e. to prayer) all the 
more, that I may get back to you the sooner. 


The connexion of vv.!7£ is not only with v.’, but with vyv.816, 

It would be indeed a grief to your true leaders if you gave way to 
these zouxiAar kai €évae doctrines, instead of following men who 
are really (this is the force of airo/) concerned for your highest 
interests.  Mei@ceobe (cp. Epict. Fragm. 27; TOV ™ poo opiovvra 
Starkorov fy TE el pev dpeivova, a&KOVELV xpn Kat weiGecbat 
he kat OtelkeTe (tretxe i is not a LXX term); strong words but 
justified, for the Adyos tod Geod which Christian leaders preached 
meant authoritative standards of life for the community (cp. 1 Co 
Alf. al 1487 etc. ), inspired by the Spirit. Insubordination was 
the temptation at one pole, an overbearing temper (1 P 5°) the 
temptation at the other. Our author knows that, in the case 
of his friends, the former alone is to be feared. He does not 
threaten penalties for disobedience, however, as Josephus does (c. 
Apionem, ii. 194) for insubordination on the part of the Jewish 
laity towards a priest: 6 d€ ye TOUT ta) meiouevos beer Siknv ws 
els Tov Geov aitov doeBv. Rather, he singles out the highminded 
devotion of these leaders as an inducement to the rank and file 
to be submissive. Adtot yap dypunvotow bmép tov Wuxdv Spar, 
almost as Epictetus says of the true Cynic who zealously con- 
cerns himself with the moral welfare of men, vmepyypiTvyKev tarep 
avOpurwy (111. 22. 95 ; he uses the verb once in its literal sense 
of a soldier having to keep watch through the night, iii. 24. 32). 


240 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS [XIII 17. 


The force of the phrase is flattened by the transference of tép 
Tav Wuxdv buoy to a position after ds Adyov droddcovtes (as A vg). 
The latter expression, ws (conscious that) Adyov dmrodwcovres (ws 
with fut. ptc. here only in NT), is used by Chrysostom, de 
Sacerdotio, ii. 18 (cp. Vi. 1), to enforce a sense of ministerial 
responsibility (et yap Tav oixetwy TAnupednparoy eidivas t bmréxovrTes 
ppirroper, as ov Svvqnoopevor TO wup expuyety exeivo, TL xpt) Teicer Gan 
mpoo doKay Tov brép tocovTwy dmroXoyetobat pédovta ; ;), but in 
IIpds ‘EBpaiovs the writer assumes that the yyovpevor are doing 
and will do their duty. Any sadness which they may feel is 
due, not to a sense of their own shortcomings, but to their 
experience of wilfulness and error among their charges. Asyov 
dmodtddvar is more common in the NT than the equivalent Adyov 
d:ddvat, which recurs often in Greek literature, eg. in Plato’s 
Sympos. 1890, mpdcexe tov voiv Kal ovtws A€ye as SHowv Adyor, 
or in the complaint of the Fayyum peasants (A.D. 207), who 
petition the local centurion that the disturbers of their work may 
be called to account: dévotvres, éav cor S6€y, KerXedoar adrods 
axOnvat eri oe Adyov aroddcovras wept Tovtov (GCP. i. 3547 6). 
In Clem. Alex. Quis div. salv. 42, John says to the captain of 
the robbers, éy® Xpiorad Adyov dHcw trép cod. 

The tva clause (iva peta xapas Todt TowWow Kal ph orevdLovtes) 
goes back to weifeoOe . . . taeixere. The members have it in 
their power to thwart and disappoint their Tryobpevot. Tovro 7. 
refers to dypurvotcw, and the best comment on kai wn orevalovTes 
is in Denny’s hymn: 


“OQ give us hearts to love like Thee,’ 
Like Thee, O Lord, to grieve 
Far more for others’ sins than all 
The wrongs that we receive.” 


The last four words, dducitehés yap Spuiv toéto, form a rhe- 
torical litotes, as when Pindar (Olymp. 1. 53) remarks, axépdeva 
Aédoyxev Gapuva Kaxaydpos. It would bea “sore loss” to them 
if their lives failed to answer the hopes and efforts of their 
nyovpevot, hopes like those implied in 69 and 10%%, *AdAvouredés 
(‘no profit”) is probably used after Adyov drodHcovres with its 
sense of “reckoning.” Compare the use of the adverb in 
Theophrastus, viii. 11 (ov yap pdovov Wevdovrat GAXG kal dAvotTeADS 
dra\\arrover), and the dry remark of Philo (¢% Hlaccum, 6), 
speaking about the attempt of the Alexandrian anti-Semites to 
erect images in Jewish places of worship, when he says that 
Flaccus might have known @s od Avowredes €6n mwartpia kwveiv ! 
The term lent itself to such effective under-statements, as in 
Philo’s aphorism (fragments of Philo, ed. J. Rendel Harris, 


p. 70) 76 émvopkeiv avdavov Kal ddXvotreA orator. 


XIII. 18, 19.] PRAYERS 241 


The next word (v.}8) is about himself. Mpovedyeobe (continue 
praying) wept (cp. 2 Mac 1° kai viv ade éopev mpooevyopevon mrept 
bpav) hpov (plural of authorship), wer@due8a (a modest confidence : 
“‘whatever some of you may think, I believe”) yap 61 kad 
guveidynow éxopev. He is conscious of a keen desire (€Aovres as 
in 121’) to act in a straightforward, honest way ; hence he can ask 
their prayers. Hence also they may feel confident and eager 
about praying for him. The writer chooses xadyv (cp. on v.%) 
instead of a&yaOyv as his adjective for ovveidnow, probably for the 
sake of assonance with the following xad@s, perhaps also to avoid 
the hiatus after 67 When he adds, év waéow (here neuter) 
kah@s Oédovtes dvactpépeoOar (a phrase which occurs in the 
Pergamos inscript. 459° xaA@s Kat évddEws avaotpadjvat, in the 
rst century B.c. inscription (Priene, 115°) avaorpepopevos ev racw 
piA[avOpdrws|, and in Epict. iv. 4. 46, €opryv dyew dvvaca kal? 
nuepay, OTL KaAwS aveotpadys év THE TO Epyw, etc.), the language 
recalls that of 2 Co 1" 12 where Paul appeals for the help of his 
readers’ prayers and pleads his honesty of conscience (76 paprv- 
plov THS cvverdnoews HOV, OTL. . . dvertpddywev xTA.). Perhaps 
the writer is conscious that his readers have been blaming him, 
attributing (say) his absence from them to unworthy motives, as 
in the case of Paul (eg. 1 Th 218, 2 Co 11), This may be the 
feeling which prompts the protest here and the assurances in 
vv.19. 23, “JT am still deeply interested in you; my absence is 
involuntary ; believe that.” 


Kal is inserted before mept by D vt Chrys. (possibly as a reminiscence of 
1 Th 5%), z.e. pray as well as obey (‘‘et orate pro nobis,” d); this would 
emphasize the fact that the writer belonged to the jyyovuervor. But the plural 
in v.!8 is not used to show that the writer is one of the *yovmevor mentioned 
in v.27, for whom the prayers of the community are asked. He was one of 
them ; #udv here is the literary plural already used in 5% 6*11. There 
are apt parallels in Cicero’s de Offictzs, ii. 24 (“f Quem nos. . . e Graeco in 
Latinum convertimus. Sed toto hoc de genere, de quaerenda, de collocanda 
pecunia vellens etiam de utenda”), and OP. x. 1296 (the letter of a boy 
to his father), rou . . . Ptdorovotpuev kal avawyuxduer. erOdueba (rrelPouat 
256. 1319. 2127) has been changed into wemot@apev by x¢ C° D © W 6. 104. 
263. 326 (Blass), probably because the latter (‘‘ we are confident’) is stronger 
than mel@oueba, which (cp. Ac 26%) only amounts to ‘‘ we believe” (though 
implying ‘‘we are sure”). Retaining wevOdue@a, A. Bischoff (Zezts. fiir ave 
neut. Wess. ix. 171 f.) evades the difficulty by altering the order of the words : 
mpocevxX. epl huav’ Kadhv yap our. Exouev, Bre melOoucda ev waow xk. 0. 
dvaorpépec Oat, z.e. taking 87. as ‘‘ because.” 


As in Philem 2, the writer’s return is dependent on his friends’ 
prayers (v.!®) ; specially (see p. 17) let them intercede with God for 
his speedy restoration to them, tva tdxvov drroxatactaQd spiv (cp. 
OP. 181 (A.D. 49-50) doxateotdfy por 6 vids). Tdxvov may 
mean “the sooner” (ze. than if you did not pray) or simply 
“soon” (as in v.73, where, as in Hellenistic Greek, it has lost 

16 


242 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS [XIITI. 19, 20. 


its comparative meaning). What detained the writer, we cannot 
tell. Apparently (v.?*) it was not imprisonment. 

A closing prayer and doxology, such as was not uncommon 
in epistles of the primitive church (eg. 1 Th 5%, 1 P 5"), now 
follows. Having asked his readers to pray for him, he now prays 
for them. 

' 0 May the God of peace ‘who brought up” from the dead our Lard (7%) 
Jesus (see p. Ixili), ‘‘the” great ‘* Shepherd of the sheep, with the. blood of 
the eternal covenant,” » fur nish you with everything that ts good for the doing 


of his will, creating in your lives by Jesus Christ what 1s acceptable tn his 
own sight! To hin (i.e. God) de (sc. etn) glory for ever and ever. Amen. 


‘O Geds ris cipyyvys means the God of saving bliss (see on 12"), 
cipnvy being taken in a sense like the full OT sense of the secure 
prosperity won by the messianic triumph over the hostile powers 
of evil (cp. 2!4 72). There is no special allusion here, as in 
Paul’s use of the phrase (Ro 15%8, 2 Co 13" etc.), to friction in 
the community ; the conflict is one in which God secures «ipyvy 
for his People, a conflict with evil, not strife between members 


of the church. The method of this triumph is described in. 


some OT phrases, which the writer uses quite apart from their 


original setting. The first quotation is from Is 634% ov 6 


avafsiBaoas éx THs yns TOV woLmeva TOV TpoParwyv, which the writer _ 


applies to Jesus—his only reference to the resurrection. (cp. on 
vy.11 12), But there is no need (with Blass) to follow Chrysostom 
in reading trys yys here for vexpdv. With dvayetv in this sense, 
éx vexpdv (So Ro ro’) or some equivalent (é€ adov, Ps 304, Wis 
1618, Joseph. Azz. vi. 14. 2) is much more natural. In réy 
Tou.eva Tov TpoBdrwv Tov peyay, 6 péyas is applied to him as in 
414 1071, The figure of the zouwjv, which never occurs in Paul, 
plays no role in our author’s argument as it does in 1 Peter (2% 
5*); he prefers tepeds or dpynyds, and even here he at once 
passes to the more congenial idea of the diafy«y. Jesus is the 
great Shepherd, as he has made himself responsible for the 
People, identifying himself with them at all costs, and sacrificing 
his life in order to save them for God. But as death never 
occurs in the OT description of the divine shepherd, not even 
in the 23rd Psalm, the writer blends with his quotation from 
Isaiah another—év aipare Siadiixys aiwviov, a LXX phrase from 
Zech ott (& atpare diabhyxys cov ée$améoredas Seopious cov), 


Is 55° (Siabyropat t ppv Sia qeny aiavov), ait "Ev alpare diab yKys | 


aiwviou goes with dvayayav, not with ror Toipeva, in which case 
tov would need to be prefixed to the phrase. Jesus was raised 
to present his blood as the atoning sacrifice which mediated the 
Siabjxy (9! 246). To the resurrection (cp. on yv.!2) is thu’ 
ascribed what elsewhere in the epistle is ascribed to the eiveAOety 


eis Ta ayia. But as the stress falls on aiwvéov, then more is 


XIII. 20, 21.| . THE SHEPHERD’S BLOOD 243 


implied than that apart from the aiza no dia0y«y could have 
been instituted. In reality the thought resembles that of 9!4 
(ds dea Tet LAT OS aimviov éavrov mpoojnveyxey . . . Kabapret THV 
gwveldnow Huav .. . eis TO Aarpevetv Gea Covrt), where eis 10 
Aarpevev bed corresponds to «ig TO Tovjoar TO OéAnya adtod 
below; & «rd. is “equipped with,” not “in virtue of.” This 
interpretation is in line with -the author’s argument in chs. 
7-10. ‘ Videtur mihi apostolus hoc belle, Christum ita resur- 
rexisse a mortuis, ut mors tamen eius non sit abolita, sed 
aeternum vigorem retineat, ac si dixisset: Deus filum suum 
excitavit, sed ita ut sanguis, quem semel in morte fudit, ad 
sanctionem foederis aeterni post resurrectionem vigeat fructumque 
suum proferat perinde ac si semper flueret” (Calvin). In 
Kataptica: (the aor. optative)! «xrA., there is a parallel to the 
thought of Ph 233, Bis 76 wojoar 7O GéAnpa avdrod recalls the 
Janguage of - To%, and 8a “Iycot Xptotod goes with ody: the 
power of God in our lives as for our lives (v.2°) works through 
the person of Jesus Christ. To take dd ‘I. X. with 75 eédpeotov 
évémioy avtod yields an unobjectionable sense, corresponding to 
the thought of v.%, But 7rd... adrod stands quite well by 
itself (cf. 1 Jn 372). 

The writer makes no such use of the shepherd and flock metaphor as, ¢.z., 
Philo had done. The Jewish thinker (V2¢. A/os, 1. 11) argues that the 
calling of a shepherd is the best preparation for anyone who is to rule over 
men ; hence ‘‘ kings are called shepherds of their people” as a title of honour. 
He also interprets the sheep as the symbol of a nature which is capable of 
improvement (de sacrif. Abel. 34, mpoxowis 6€ wpdBarov, ws Kal abrd dydot 
robvoua, ciu8orov).' The classical habit of. describing kings as shepherds of 
their people would help to make the metaphor quite intelligible to readers of 
non-Jewish origin, Compare, é.g., the saying of Cyrus (Xenophon, Cyropaedza, 
viii. 2.14), that a good shepherd resembled a good king, Tov re yap vopéa 
xphvat py evdaiwova ra KTVT jwovovrvra xpiobGat avrots, } On wpoBdrwr evdat- 
hovla, Tov Te Baoihéa woatrws evdalwovas modes Kal dvOpwrous movobyTa 
XpHoa avrots. 

Mavré was soon furnished with the homiletic addition of épye (C K M P 
syr sah arm eth Chrys. Thdt. etc.), or even épyw Kal heyy (A, from 2 Th eae 
IIo.dy has either air@ (x* A C* 33* 1288 boh) or éavr@ (Greg. Nyss.) or 
avrés (d 1912) prefixed. Hort, admitting that ‘‘it is impossible to make 
sense of airm” (B. Weiss, Blass = éavré), maintains that av’rés is original. 
It is a homiletic isaviions out of which ai7@ arose by corruption. “Hyty 
(sD M © 33. 104. 181. 326. 917. 927. 1258. 1739. 1912, etc. syr¥8 sah boh 
arm) is merely an error for tpiv, due to the preceding jydr. 


A personal postscript (vv.?*74) is now added, as 1 P 5!*¥ 
afteri5 9. 4, 


22 T appeal to you, brothers (3)-!* 10”), to bear with this appeal of mine. 
ft ts but a short letter. 





1 This lonely occurrence of the optative points to its tendency after the 
LXX to disappear; thus, apart from mi yevolro, it only occurs once in a 
writer like Epictetus (iii. 5. 11). 


244 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS  [XIITI. 22. 


°3 You must understand that our brother Timotheus ts now free. Tf he 
comes soon, he and I will see you together. 

4 Salute all your leaders and all the saints. The Italians salute you. 

25 Grace be with you all. Amen. 


The Timotheus referred to (in v.28) is probably the Timo- 
theus who had been a colleague of Paul. The other allusions 
have nothing to correspond with them in the data of the NT. 
But there is no ground for supposing that vv.?2-25 were added, 
either by the writer himself (Wrede) or by those who drew up 
the canon, in order to give a Pauline appearance to the docu- 
ment (see Introd., pp. xxvilif.). Seeberg’s reasons for regarding 
vv.22-25 as a fragment of some other note by the same writer are 
that 28> implies not a church but a small group of Christians, 
and that vv.!8 23 presuppose different situations; neither reason 
is valid. The style and contents are equally unfavourable to 
Perdelwitz’s theory, that vv.?225 were added drevt manu by some 
one who wrote out a copy of the original Adyos rapaxAjoews and 
forwarded it to an Italian church. 

In v.2? dvéxeoOe, for which avréyeoGe (J. Pricaeus apud Tit 19) | 
is a needless conjecture, takes a genitive (as in 2 Ti 48 tis 
byawovons Sidackadias odk avéefovrat, and in Philo, guod omnis 
probus, 6, kat THs warpos pev 7 pNTpPOs eriTayparwv Taides avexXovTAt, 
yvaopysoe 6¢ dv ay tpyynrat dvaxeAevwvrat). It has been flattened 
into dvéyeo Oar (infinitive as in 1 P 2!) by D* W vg arm 181. 436. 
1288. 1311. 1873, etc. (Blass). A written homily may be like a 
speech (Ac 13}5), a Adyos THs mapaxdynoews (cp. on 125); qapa- 
kAnows echoes tmapaxadéw He is not the only early Christian 
writer who mildly suggested that he had not written at undue 
length (cp. e.g. 1 P 51260 éXtywv eypaila, tapaxadov rr. ; Barn 15 8) 
Kat yap (‘‘etenim” as 4?) 8a Bpayxéwv (sc. Adywv) éméoterda ! 
(epistolary aorist) dptv. Avi Bpayéwy was a common phrase in this 
connexion ; 4g. Lucian’s Zoxaris, 56 (meoréov kal rattd oor 
vopoberovvte Kat dua Bpayewv Aexréov, wi Kal Kapns Hplv TH axon 
ouptreptvooTav). IIpos “EBpatovs may be read aloud easily in one 
hour. The writer has had a good deal to say (zoAts, 514), and 
he has now said it. Not I hope, he adds pleasantly, at too great 
length! As for the dvcepyyvevtos Aéyevv, that is another question 
which he does not raise here. He is not pleading for a patient 
reading, because he has had to compress his argument into a 
short space, which makes it hard to follow, owing to its highly 
condensed character. What he does appear to anticipate is the 
possibility of his readers resenting the length at which he has 


1 For éréorecha (here as in Ac 15% 21%; Theophr. 24!8 émicréAX\wy up 
ypadgew xT. = “write,” ‘send a letter”), see Laqueur’s Quaest. Epigraph. 
et Papyr. Selectae, 16 f. (émioré\Xey = ‘f communicare aliquid cum aliquo sive 
per hominem sive per epistolam ”). 


XIII. 22, 23.] SHORT LETTERS 245 


written. When the younger Pliny returned a book to Tacitus, 
with some criticisms upon its style and matter, he said he was 
not afraid to do so, since it was those most deserving praise whc 
accepted criticism patiently (‘neque enim ulli patientius repre- 
hunduntur quam qui maxime laudari merentur,” £7. vii. 20), 
The author of Ilpos “EBpaiovs might have taken this line, for he 
has done justice to the good qualities of his friends (e.g. 6% 10%9 
13), even in reproving them for backwardness and slowness. 
But he prefers to plead that his words have not been long; his 
readers surely cannot complain of being wearied by the length of 
his remarks. Not long before, Seneca had made the same kind 
of observation to Lucilius (Z%. xxxvili. 1) about short letters 
being more effective than lengthy discussions. ‘ Merito exigis 
ut hoc inter nos epistularum commercium frequentemus, pluri- 
mum proficit sermo, quia minutatim inrepit animo.. . ali- 
quando utendum est et illis, ut ita dicam, concionibus, ubi qui 
dubitat inpellendus est: ubi vero non hoc agendum est ut velit 
discere sed ut discat, ad haec submissiora uerba ueniendum est. 
facilius intrant et haerent: nec enim multis opus est, sed efficaci- 
bus.” But Seneca’s practice was not always up to his theory in 
this respect. His Stoic contemporary Musonius Rufus gave 
examples as well as precepts of brevity, which were more telling 
(e.g. doris O€ wavTaxod Setrat drode(Eews Kal Orov Gadhy TA TpdypaTa 
éotiv, 7) Sua ToAAGY arodeixvvcGar BovrAcTaL atT@ Ta du dArALywv 
duvdpeva, TavTamaciw aromos Kai Ovopabys, ed. Hense, pp. 1, 2). 
The literary critic Demetrius considered that the length of a 
letter should be carefully regulated (ro dé péyefos cvvertadOw THs 
exiatoAns, De Llocut. 228); letters that were too long and stilted 
in expression became mere treatises, ovyypdupara, as in the case of 
many of Plato’s, whereas the true éricroAy, according to Demetrius 
(tb¢d. 231), should be ¢iAodpovyars in a brief compass (cVvropos). 
Which would apply to IIpés “Efpafouvs. Erasmus comments: 
‘“‘Scripsi paucis, ut ipse vos brevi visurus.” He may have, but 
he does not say so. 

In v.78 yweoxete is imperative; he is conveying a piece of 
information. See, eg., Zebt. P. 372 (73 B.C.) yivwoxe Kedaday 
. . . mpooeAndrArfevac Anpntpiw: ibid. 127 (118 B.C.) 362 56°. The 
construction with the participle is common (eg. Lk 84); you 
must understand tov d8edbsv pay (omitted by 8° D> °K PW 6 
Chrys. etc.) TupdOeov drodedupévoy, ze. “is (set) free,” not 
necessarily from prison. ‘The general sense, ranging from “‘is 
free” to “has started,” may be illustrated, e.g., from the applica- 
tion of a woman to leave Alexandria via Pharos (OP. 1271* 5, 
ili A.D.: d&iO ypdwWar oe TO EritpOTw THs Pdpov aroiooa pe Kata 
To os), or from BGU. i. 27!*)) (xa iyépav mpocdexopl||Oa 
diycowplav More Ews oNpepov pydevay arodcAVaOat Tov pEeTa CiTOV), 


246 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS (XIII. 28, 24, | 


where é. = “has set out,” as in Ac 28 (dredvovro). The inter- 
pretation of the next words pe of édv TéxLov Epyntar dpopor Spds 


depends upon whether Limotheus is supposed to join the writer 
or to journey straight to the community addressed. In the 
latter case, the writer, who hopes to be coming soon (v.}%) 
‘himself, looks forward to meeting him there. In the former 


case, they will travel together. It is natural to assume that when _ 


the writer sent this message, Timotheus was somewhere else, and 


that he was expected ere long to reach the writer. For owouor= _ 
visit, see -3 Jn 14 éAmilw dé eiOéws Wey oe, etc. “Edy taxtov 


éoxytac may mean either, “‘as soon as he comes,” or “if he 
comes soon.” The latter suits the situation implied in v.!® 
better. The writer (in v.!®) asks the prayers of his readers, that 
some obstacle to his speedy return may be removed. If this 
obstacle were the hindrance that kept Timotheus from joining 
him on a journey which they had already planned to the church 
(Riggenbach), he would have said, “Pray for Timotheus, 1 
cannot leave for you till he rejoins me.” But the idea is: as 


the writer is rejoining his friends soon (he hopes), he will be: 


accompanied by Timotheus, should the latter arrive before he 


has to start. Written advice is all very well, but he hopes soon 
to follow up this Adyos zapaxAyjocews with personal intercourse, 
like Seneca in Z¢f. vi. 5 (‘‘ plus tamen tibi et uiua vox et convictus 
quam oratio proderit. in rem praesentem uenias oportet, primum 
quia homines amplius oculis quam auribus credunt, deinde quia 
longum iter est per praecepta, breue et efficax per exempla”). 
The greeting comes as usual last (v.74). “AomdouoOe xrA. is 


an unusual turn, however; the homily was evidently sent to the | 


community, who are told to greet all their }yoduevor. This finds 
its nearest parallel in Paul’s similar injunction (Ro 16") to the 
Ephesian Christians to salute this and that eminent member of 
their circle. Still, no other NT church is bidden to salute its 
leaders; and though the writer plainly wishes to reinforce his 


counsel in v.!’, the mévras suggests that the persons addressed - 


were “part of the whole church of a large city . ... a congrega- 
tion attached to some household” (Zahn) ; they are to convey 
the writer’s greetings to all the leaders of the larger local church— 
and to all their fellow-members (kat wdvras Tods dytous being more 
intelligible, in. the light of a passage like Ph 4?! dordoaoGe wavra 
aytov). To his personal greetings he now adds greetings from some 
Italians. In ot dad ris ‘ITadias, dd may have its usual sense of 
“domiciled at” (practically = éy), as, ¢.g., in OP. i. 81 (A.D. 49-50), 
where tOv dx “Ogvptyywv means “the inhabitants of Oxy- 
rhynchus,” or in TiAnve . . . dwd ya, ze. at Phmau (ostracon of 
A.D. 192, quoted in Deissmann’s Light from the East, p. 186). 
If it thus means residents in Italy, the writer is in Italy 





XIII. 24. | FAREWELL 247 


himself. But of d@ré tis “Iradias, on the analogy of Ac 2127 
(of dad tis “Acias “lovdaior), might equally well mean Italians 
resident for the time being outside Italy; in this case the 
writer, who is also abroad, is addressing some Italian community, 
to which their countrymen forward greetings. Grammatically, 
either rendering is possible, and there is no tradition to decide 
the question. Perhaps of amd rys “Iradias is more natural, 
however, as a description of some Italian Christians abroad who 
chanced to be in the same locality as the writer and who take 
this opportunity of sending their greetings by him to an Italian 
community. Ifthe writer was in Italy, we should have expected 
mavtes of ard THs ‘Iradias, considering the size of Italy and the 
scattered Christian communities there at this period. 

The final benediction, } xdpts (sc. €orw or ein) peta mdvTov 
spay (Tit 3/4, 2 Ti 47") has a liturgical duyv, which is omitted 
by X* W fuld sah 33; the homily was, of course, intended to be 
read aloud at worship. 


INDEXES. 


~—-—--4----- 


I. INDEX GRAECITATIS. 


Words marked * are peculiar in NT to Hebrews. 


33 i] 


3 > 


> B ] ” 


t occur only in quotations from LXX. 
¢ are peculiar in NT to Luke (gospel, Acts) and Hebrewah 
[Paul] [T] [P] are only used elsewhere in NT by Paul, or in 


the Pastoral Epistles, or in 1 Peter. 


t’Aapdy, 54, 711, 94, 


ABpadp, 216. 635, aie 2. 4. 5. 6. :, 
I 18 1 
ayabés, 13); : 7a ayabd, og, 10}. 


+ dyadXNlacts, I 
t dyardw, 19, 128, 
arydmn, 61°, 10%, 
dyamnrés (ayamnrol), 6°. 
dryryedos, 14 5 & (LXX) ™ (LXX) 33, 
2% 5.7 (LXX)% 16, 7222 132, 
* ayeveadoynros, 7°. 
dyidtw, 2", of, Lene, 14, 29° 312, 
ay.acuds, 1214 
dytos, 3} (Christians) : 


10” 134: wveiua dywov, 24, 37, 
64, 9%, 10°: rd dytov, 9}. 
ay.érns, 12)° [Paul ?]. 

t dyxupa, 6". 
ayvoew, 5%. 

* ayvonua, 9’. 
ayputvéw (v7ép), 
dyw, 2), 
aywv, 12! [Paul]. 


13)7, 


ddeApds, 2M 12 (LXX)17, 3h 12, 7d, 


81 (LXX), 109, 1322 23) 
t+ ddixla (19?), 81, 
&dixos, 61°, 
dddxiuos, 68 [Paul]. 
advvaros (ddvvarov), 6% 18, ro4, 118, 
+ del, 32°, 
aberéw, 10%, 


ol dro, 6'°, 
13243 (ra) dyin, 82, 9% 3 8+ 12 24. 25, 


* d0érnots, 718, 978, 
* dOAnows, 10°, 
* alyevos, 1197, 
t Alydmrios, 117%. 
Alyunros; 37% 3? 211-7; 
aldws, 1278 (s.v.Z) [T]. 
alua, 214, 7. 12.13. 14, 18. 19. 20. 
(LXX) al. 22. 25 10% 19- 29 17%, 
12 24, ll. 12. 20 (LXX). 
i alnarexxuatas bee 
*+ atveois, 131°. 
aipetabat (EAdpuevos), 
* aicOnrnpiov, 514, 
alaxvvn, 127, 
airta, 21}, 
tatrios, 59. 
aidv, 18(LXX), 5°(LXX), 6% 20, 
wit (LXX) 42 (UL XX),) 72 Bs of 
aldves, 12, 96, 11%, 73 21, 
alwvios, 137° (diay), 9! (KAnpo- 
vouta), 67 (kptua), 9! (AUTpwors), 
g"4 (wvetua), 5° (rwrnpla). 
&xaxos, 776 [Paul]. 
d&kavéa, 68, 
* dxardduros, 738, 
* dxruws, 107, 
akon, 4°, su. 
dxovw, 203, 3% (LXX) 15 16, 
(LXX), 12), 
* axpoOlviov, 74. 
t+ dkpos, 117! (rd &xpov, LXX). 
dA7jGera, 1076, 
adnOivds, 87, 9 


11% [Paul]. 


4 i 


24 1022, 


248 


INDEXES 


dANd, 218 318 ce B16 24 
10% 2 39° 1138) poll. 22. 26 (XX), 
1214, 

+ dddrdoow, eae 
aAAjAos, 1074, 
dros, 48, 1155, 
adAbrptos, 97, 11% #4, 
aXX ov, 33, 4%. 
* ddvotredns, 137. 
apaprdvw, 317, 1078, 
duapria, 138, 217, 318, 418) 61.3 27 
gi2 (LXX), 26. 4 Rotisne 6 
(LXX) & UM. 12. 17. (LXX) 18. 26. 
1125, 12! 4, 131, 
dpaprwdés, 726, 12°, 
dpuedéw, 2°, 89 (LXX), 
d&ueutrros, 87. 
* dueTtaderos, 617 18, 
dup (2), 1372. 
* duhrwp, 7%. 
dlavros, 77° (Christ), 134 (Chris- 
tians). 
+ dupos, 1112, 
duwnos, 914, 
dy, 13(LXX), 48, 8* 7, 107, 11%, 
avayKatos, 8°. 
dvdryen, 71% 27, g)6: 28, 
dvayw, 137, 
t dvadéyoum, 1117, 
t dvabewpéw, 137. 
dvaipéw, 10%, 
* dvaxawltw, 69, 
dvakdumrw, rr}, 
* dvadoylfouat, 12°, 
dvamiuynoKkw, 10°, 
dvduynots, 10°. 
*+ dvaplOunros, 1114, 
avdoracts, 67, 11°, 
* dvacraupbw, 69, 
dvacrpépouwat, 10°, 1318, 
dvaotpop?, 137. 
dvaré\rw, 714, 
dvadépw, 777 (Bolas), 97% (auap- 
rlas), 13) (Ouclav). 
dvéxw, 137%, 
dvOpwros, 2° (LXX), 51, 616, 7% 28, 
82, 9”, 136 (LXX). 
t dvinus, 13°. 
aviornm, 71) (intrans.), 
+ dvopia, 19 (?), 812, 1017, 
t dvop0dw, 12}, 
* dvraywvifoua, 124, 
+ dvrarodldwut, 10%, 
dyri, 127 16, 

* dyrixablornut, 124. 
avriroyla, 61%, 77, 125, 
dyrirvros, 974 [P)]. 


oa 


249 


dvuméraxros, 2° [T]. 
Tt dyw, 12%, 
t dvwrepoy, 108, 
dvupedhs, 7° [T] 
dévos, 118, 
d&idw, 3°, 10°, 
adparos, 1177 [Paul]. 
amayyéA\w, 2)*, 
amad\doow, 21°, 
draé, oo gi 26. 27. a 107, 
(LbXxX) +", 
amapaBaros, 774, 


+++ 


1276 


* 


* dmdrwp, 73, 
aravyacua, 1%, 
arelGera, 4% 11 [Paul]. 
amebéw, 338, 1151, 
darevpos, 5%, 
amekdéxouat, 978, 
ORT ines, 


: 12 . 4.10 ; 
as re, 26 i li? by 
. ° J 8 ; 9 ° : 


] 112+ 15. 34 fals 2 324, 
dmroBdddw, 10°, 
amoBérw, 117, 
amroypagw, 127°. 
amodexaréw, 7° (?), 
drodldwur, 121 16, 1317, 
arodoxiagw, 1217, 
dmrobvjoKkw, 78, 927, 10%, 1 1418. 21. 37, 
aroxabiornut, 13), 
dmdékemat, 977. 
drédavors, 11% [T]. 
amoXelrw (drodelrerat), 
tT drddAupe, 122, 

dmronvTpwors, 915, 1135, 

atrodvw, 137%, 

dtrooré\Xw, 114, 

drécroXos, 3) (Christ). 

amocrpépw, 12”, 

amrorlOnut, 121, 

amrwnera, 10°9, 


* 


* 


6). Up 
10%, 


* 


++ 


4% ye I 075, 


dpvéouwat, 1174, 
apmayh, 10%, 
dpros, 9%. 
dpxy, 1 (kar dpxds, LXX), 23, 
314, 512, 61, 73, 
+ apxnyos, gi0h 124, 
dpxtepeds, 217, 31, i415, 51.5. 10 
620, 726. 27.28 81. 3° 7. 11. 25 Tou 
(s.v.2.), 1311, 
t doddevros, 12”. 
daBévera, 41°, 57, 773, 1154, 
dcbevys, 7°. 


250 


domdfouct, 1118, 1374, 
tt doretos, 1178, 
* dorpov, 11", 
aopanys, 6, 


118 8) ye eae lt 
7 a OSA Ss 


avrés (avrd, avrots, atvrod, ava, 
avrav), 13 4678 1.12 (EL XX), 
26 (LXX)™ (LXX)¥, 32 % 10) 
(LXX), 4& 8, 55 7, 88% (LXX) 10, 
23 one yeaa NE a, 19 | p95. 
(LXX) 2 17, 738+ 18.17, 

avrés, 1% (LX’X) 22, gre TS asta Ges 


RO 1g ten 1 (LXX), 
3° (LXX), 8% (LXX) (LXX), 
13% 17: airév, 2% (LXX) 7 
Nb oa) cha e BO a 1. 21. me. 
24, 26.28) p75. 6.19 7218. qirous, 
y4- 12 (LXX), 248, 8% (LX xX) 
19 (LX), We TO (EK) eras: 
adrd.d oF nord, pO arn) 


etry, ti y abriy, 14554, Lol 


E28 OUT HE, OT yd Dra eiean 
Eb) aprony Ors. ake [Ee i 
(LXX), 3% (LXX)® & 7 (LXX 


) 
1B(LXX), 4% (LXX) 1-18, 610, 
ee Ore te Xn hie Taian) 
10. 1213 15. 21. girGy (219, 75. 6. 25 
rr16: 2% 8. LX =o 10 1. 12 
TOME 17 “aire, (LXX) § 
(LXX), 282% B(LXX), 44, 59, 
710» co88 (LUXX 92? Favre b™, 
SPAT KN), wise). Tate oor7, 
ait “atrais, 10 2 abr, 19; 
agatpéw, 104, 
*adarvys, 4}, 
* adavicuds, 818, 
dgpeots, 972, 1038, 
ddlnut, 28, 61. 
adiddpyupos, 13° [T]. 
adlarnut, 3}2. 
* ddouotdw, 7°. 
adpopdw, 127 [Paul]. 
dxpt, 41, 6", 3' (dxpis oF). 


Bamricpds, 67, 91°. 

* Bapdx, 11°, 
Baowrela, 18 (LXX), 1133, 1278, 
Baotreds, 71+2(LXX), 11° at, 
BéBaros, 22, 3% 4, 619, o}?, 
BeBardw, 2°, 139. 
BeBalwots, 616 [Paul]. 
BéByros, 1216 [T]. 

+ BiBXlov, 939, 107 (LXX), 
Bracrdvw, 9%. 
Brérw, 29, 322 19 19%, 17}. 87, 225, 


INDEXES 


|; BonPea, 41°, 
Bonbéw, 21%, 
*+ BonOds, 13°. 
*+ BoXks (s.v.l.), 12%. 
* Bordvn, 6". 
BovAy, 61". 
Bovroua, 617. 
Boaxus, 2% (LXX)* 3 
BpSua, 9%, 13°. 
BpG@ore, 128, 


yada, tase 13, 
yapmos, 134. 
yap (90 times). 
*Tededv, 11°, 
T yeved, Cae 
* yeveahoyéw, 7 ae 
yevvdw, 15. (LXX), 
Tr}2 (@)- 23, 
yevw, 2°, 6% 5,. 
* vewpyéw, 6. . 
yi, 1%(LXX), 67, 8% °(LXX), 
[1% 18. 29. 88 “y9%. 26(T XX), 
ynpdokw, 8, 
ylvopat (30 times). 
ywaokw, 3° (LXX), 
104, 13%. 
*+ yvdgos, 1238, 
+ yévu, 12), 
+ ypdg@w, 107, 
yumvatcw, 524, 121, 
yuuvos, 43, 


5° (LXX), 


82 (LXX), 


“ot oP. OF, Tye 
t decxviw, 8°. 
* Sexdry, 7% * 8 2, 
* dexardw, 7% 9, 
deEvds (é Sek sin) (Lexy (éz 
Brea): 13'S) OR ae, 
* Sé0s5 (s.0.2.), 1228, 
* dépua, 1197, 
déoptos, 10°4, 133, 
decuds, 11%, 
devTepos, 87, g?+™ 78, 10%, 
déxouwar, 11%, 
Snrdw, 98, 12% fot the Spirit [P]). 
* Snutoupyds, 117° 
* Sqrov, 23%, 
dvd, with accusative (17 times). 
with genitive (38 times). 
diaBatyw, 117? 


_— af Sse ia 
ee lC!mlUlC( ClO ee eT ee 








. 
et ee 


——ae em | Oe ee 





INDEXES 


didBodos, 214. 
SiaO}Kn, 722, 8% 8-10 (LXX), gf 15+ 16. 
17 20(T XX), 10 29, 7924 320, 
dtaxovéw, 6", 
diaxovia, 134, 
didxptots, 514 [Paul]. 
Siaréyouar, 12°, 
Siapaptipouar, 2°, 
+ duapévw, 14, 
+ dudvora, $!°, 1018, 
SiacréA\Aw, 127°, 
* Sidtaryua, 1173, 
t dvarlOnu, 81°(LXX), 
(LXX). 
didgopos, 14, 8°, 9! [Paul]. 
dvddoKados, 51%. 
diddoxw, 512, 8 (LXX). 
d.dax7, 6% 137, 


Sdwur, 2(LXX), 74, 8!°(LXX), 


10" (LXX). 
Siépxomat, 434. 
dinyéoua, 11°, 
* deqvexys, 7°,<10): 44, 
* Sutxvéowar, 4!°, 
Gixdtos; IO" (LX )s 14.12”, 
dexacogvvy, I 
525, 
Ockarwpara, g} 10, 
516, 371, 61, 10%, 111216 | 
53. 
* didpOwors, 9”, 
byd7e, 11 2, 
dtcrouos, 42, 
SuoKw, 1244, 
doxéw, 41, 1079, 121% 12, 
"+ doxeuacla, 3°. 
dda, 13, 
Lae 
Sogdgw, 5°. 
dovAela, 2) [Paul]. 
dtvapmat, 238, 
tol 1, 
Dpaiit. tee. 2, O°, 07 1%) py. 2, 
Suvvaudw, 1154 [Paul]. 
duvarés, 11), 
5vo, 618, 1078, 
* ducepunvevtos, 541, 
dwped, 64. 
5@pov (SGpa), 51, 8% 4, 99, 114, 


édy, 3% 7 (LXX) (LXX), 4? 


(LXX), 10 (LXX), Gal 
* ddvrep, 314, 6°. 
€avrod, 313, 5% 4-5, 
9” 14, ef, 102. ie roms 16. 
&Bdomuos, 44. 
éyyigw, 71, 10%. 





9/6 Af 1016 


9 (LXX), Lael rte I [7 33. 


12, 28 
2 ] 


gi. (LX X) 9, 10. a. 9; 


1 2. 25 9 
ae Lhe BAY Lae 


Ge Al 27 
ee ba 


aT 


* gyryvos, 77, 
éyyis, 68, 813, 
éyelpw, 11, 
* évxawvitw, 918, 10, 
éyxaradelrw, 107, 135(LXX), 
fog (OARS hg ai Ca Lo ig an A 
€0os, 10”. 
el, 2%, 31(LXX), 4>% (LXX)8, 
6! (LXX), 74-15, 847, gi8, 1715, 
el kal, 6% 
el pn, 33°. 
ted un, 614, 
el ov, 12”, 
elOov 3" (uy DAs oe, 
eixa@v, Io}. 
elul, 127!(LXX). 
+ ef, 19 12, 0d, 
éoTlyv (18 times). 
exper, 38, 42, 11% 99, 
éoré, 128, 
elaly, 1)% (LXX) 4, 
ri} 
ets LI are 
GRO, o., TP NOM (LOO), uv tot 
(LXX)*, 1o7', 
elpyxev, 1%, 4° 4, ro 35, 13°. 
elpnvn, 77, Trl, 12! 1320, 
elpnvixds, 1214, 
els (75 times). 
els, 211, rol 14 712, 216, 
elodyw, I 
elgaxovw, 57. 


9 
ie wc 


t cicerps, 9°. 


LXX) 18-19) gl. 3. 


elagpxopat, 31) ( 
619. 20, 


(LXX) 5. (LXX) 6. 10. HW 


12. 24, 25 5 
PEO’, 


elcodos, 101%. 

elo pépw, 134. 

eira, 12°. 

éx (22 times). 

Exaoros, 3°, 64, 84 (LXX), 117), 
* éxBaivw, 1115, 

éxBaots, 13’ [Paul]. 

éxdéxouat, 10'%, 11”, 


+ éxdixnows, 10°, 


* éxdox7H, 1077, 
éxet, 75. 


éxeivos, 4* 11, 67, 8% 1 (LXX), 10'°, 
11, 19%. 
éexfnréw, 11%, 1217, 
éxxAynola, 212(LXX), 122, 
* éxhavOdvw, 125, 
+ éxdelrrw, 132, 
éxdvw, 12°, 12° (LXX). 
éxovolws, 1028 Py 
éxrpémres, r24( Ti. 
éxpépw, 68, 


252 


éxpevyw, 2°, 125, 
+ éxpoBos, 1271, 
+ @\avov, 1%. 
éX\doowv, 77. 
+ déyxw, 125. 
+ €darréw, 27 9%, 
* Aeyxos, 11}. 
+ édéyxw, 12°. 
éNenuwy, 217, 
éreos, 416. 
t EXloow, 17? (s.v.2.). 
éNrifw, 11. 
édrris, 3°, 61-18, 719, 1923, 
+ éupéven, 8, 
éwol, 10°, 13%, 
* éumavymds, 11°8, 
éumimrw, 10°}, 
éugavitw, 974, 1114, 
év (65 times). 
évdeixvumt, 6! 1 [Paul]. 
évdixos, 27 [Paul]. 
évepyhs, 412. 
évOvunots, 4). 
éviaurés, 9% >, 10h 3, 
évlornu, 9° [ Paul]. 
évvoa, 4? [P ]. 
t évoydéw, 121°, 
évoxos, 2), 
évTéX\Xw, 97° (LXX), 117, 
evroAt, 75+ 16+ 18, old, 
évrpémw, 12°. 
tt évrpouos, 127). 
évtuyxavw, 7%, 
* évuBpifw, 107%. 
évirriov, 433, 1371, 
"Evwx, 115, 
+ dEdyw, 89, 
efépxouar, 31%, 75, 115, 137%. 
HEELS. Ss, 
éto5os, 117%. 
éfovcla, 13", 
éw, 131+ 12. 18, 
éraryyeNta, 4}, 61% 1-17, 76 6 old. 
1088, 719 13. 17. 38. 39, 
éraryyé\Aw, 618, 1073, rr!) 1276, 
éeraoxtvvoua, 24, 1118, 
érrel, 
érel ody, 214, 48, 
* érewcaywyn, 7). 
&revra, 77° 37, 
ert: 
88 10(LXX), rol (LXX) 2, 
[12h 80 7210, 
dat. 2!3(LXX), 8b 6, 91015. 
1%. 26 192°8(LXX), 114 38, 
genit. 2, 6", Ts 8+ 10 (LXX), 
Ghee & ag 


be i. pi. gi? sad 102, Ij: 


accus. 27(LXX), 3°, 6!, 718, 


INDEXES 


ériyvwots, 1075, 

+ émvypdgdw, 8, 1018, 
érideixvum, 617, 
émifnréw, 1114, 1314, 
érldecis, 67. 
érOuuéw, 611, 
émixaréw, 1138, 
émikeruat, 9), 
erica Bava, 216, 8°(LXX). 
émavOdvouat, 610, 137 

* éridelrw, 11°, 

+ érirxérrouat, 2°, 

* émisxotéw, 12) [P ?]. 
éricramat, 118, 

t émiaré\Xw, 137". 
érisuvaywyn, 10” [Paul]. 
émirenéw, 85, 9%, 
érirpérw, 6°, 
émituyxdavw, 6, 1159, 

WETOS,. 7¥s 
émoupdnios, CUM rg hot 

1272, 

éwTd, 1130, 

epydtouae, 11°38, 

Epyov, 6° (1371): epya, 11° (LXX), 
2! (LXX); ) 3) (LX 4tes 
(LXX)2, 61, 9'4, 

Epnuta, 11°, 

tT Epnuos, 3% (LXX)™. 
épiov, og. 
Epunvetw, 7°. 

t épvOpds, 1179, 
Epxouar, 67, 


o*. I pis. 


118, 13% (88, 1037 
écOiw, 1077, 1319, 
+ &couat, 15, 218, 910. 12 7312), 
éxxaros, 1%, 
t éowrepos fr éawrepov), 61%, 
repos, 5S : lie 13. 15° 11°9, 
bry, 710-1. 15 , 82(LXX), 98, 10 17: 
37 (LXX), "p14 82. 6 TZ ip 
27 (LXX). 
érouudtw, 1118, 
+ &ros, 122, 319-17, 
evayyerlferOar, 47% 
* edapeoréw, 115 (LXX)§, 1336, 
evdpeoros, 1371 [Paul]. 
* evapéorws, 1278, 
+ evdoxéw, 10% & 38, 
t evderos, 67. 
*+ eddurns, 18, 
eUKatpos, 418, 
* edd Bea, 57, 12%, 
t evrAaBéouwar, 117. 
evroyéw, 614(LXX), 72+ 6 7 1120-21, 
evrAoyla, 67, 1217, 
* edreploraros, 12), 


INDEXES 


* evrroita, 1338, 
evploxw, 416, g'? (ebpduevos), 
(LXX), 1217. 
épdrak, 77, 9”, 10", 
éxOés, 13°. 
t éxOpés, 138, 1038, 
éxw (38 times). 
f fast? SY S101) 


+ fHros, 1077, 
Shy, 215, 312, 412 78. 25 
10%. 31. all G8? O. 0 Rae be 22 
tnréw, 87. 
+ tépos, 1238, 
Sunt, 7% '8 


(Gov, 1314. 


Haze (XX), 10", ries 12% 
SEVEDUIE, LO 1 RTE 1 et ae, 
+ kw, 107 % 87, 
mrucla, 11, 
quets (31 times). 
pepe, r, 38: (LXX)"*, 4 aL) 
. 37, &8. 9 f (EXX); 
rae 16. “ies 82° 7130 210, 
Av (hoav), 215, 730-11, 94. n 1158, 122, 
"Head, 117°, 1216 [Paul]. 
tfixos, 12)%, 


14, 17 
’ 


Odracoa, 111% (LXX)*, 
Odvaros, "29 14. 15 ae bet 9t5- 16. 115, 
Bappéw, 13° [Paul], 

* Gearplfw, 10°, 
bédqua, 107" (LXX) * (LXX) 20- 8, 

I 

* BeXncis, 2 
bw, 
Gepertos, Cerio. 

+ Oenedidw, 17°, 
Geds (66 times). 

*+ depdarwv, 3°. 
Gewpéw, 74. 

+ Onplov, 12”, 
Onoavpds, 1176, 
Oiyydave, rm", 12” (LXX) [Paul]. 
OXBw, 1197 
OrtYWes, 108, 
Opdévos, 18(LXX), 41%, 81, 127, 
Ovydrnp, 1174, 

*+ Ovédda, 128, 

*+ Ouuarnprov, 94 


i (LXX)8 (LXX), 12!7, 


Ouuds, 1177, 
Buola, 51, 727, 88, 9% 2% 26, yo). 5. 
(LXX) © Rows il. 12. 20 114, 


1 oat 
Buciaarhpiov, Y hes te toe 


1° 


253 


TaxéB, 119 2. 21, 
idouat, 121°, 
t ld0v, 23%, 88, 107: 9, 
+ lepareta, ice 
‘Teperx, Lag 
iepevs, Bert) 1p) Soliet ld. 16.172 
(LXX) 22 21. 23 84, 9°, 1oll. 21, 
‘Tepovoadnu, 12%, 
* jepwovvn, "71+ 12 24, 
*’TepOde, 1152, 


"Inoots, 29, 31, 414, 6, 722, rol? 
(‘Inood Eee eat "12% 24 138 
(‘Incods Xpirés), 13) 30. 21 


(’Inood Xpiorod), 
* ixernpta, 57. 
t tNdoxopac, 217, 
itaorypiov, 9° [Paul]. 
t trews, 8}2, 
+ ludreov, 121 (122), 
AT ie etn be) tory eet 8 oath 
hae 1277, 1212. 17. 19 
Wa. jo, 33, 41}, O'S, 11 512% 3, 
*Tovdas, 7'4, 88 (LXX). 
"Toad, 11% 17. 18. (1EXDG) 20 
tornut, 10% 2, 
lavupes, 5468), 11%, 
loxvw, 9). 
7 Iradla, 130". 
Lwonp, 112+ 22, 


=Joshua, 4°. 


Tt kaya, 8°, 
Kaddmep, 4. 
kaBapltw, ol 2% 23° 102, 
kabapicus, 1°, 
kaOapéds, 107%, 

* kabapdrys, 9}, 

+ xkdOnua, 13, 

T xaGl(w, 1°, 8, 10%) 127, 
KaOlornpt, 2" (LXX P), 53, 7%, 8°. 
Kadus, at 4° i 5° 6. 8°, 107, 1122, 
Kadwomep, 54. 
kal (54 times), 

Kdiv, 114. 
xauvbs, (diabyjun), 8* (LX X)1*5 91°, 
kalarep, 58, 7°, rein 
Kaupds, 9% 10, [yi 15, 
t xalrow, 4°, 
Tt xalw, 1218, 
KaKelvos, 4°, 
kakés, 514, 

* kaxovxéw, 1197, 138, 

canew, 24 318, ct. ob. 
(LXX). 

KaA0S, 61". 6%, TO") 19% 18, 

Kadds, 1338, 

Kdpuvw, 12°, 


118 18 


254 INDEXES 


t 14 618 
Kparew, 4°, . 
t+ dv, 127, 12. 15 cpdros, 24, 
St {Tie} OL oe er a stunatloky: 
ee (LEX)', 80(LXX), 108% | kpavyth 5? 


7.19.22 Q6 25 
LRG) FA) 2? KpelTT wr, hia 7 nee S90 

eae 84 7716.35.40 yo24 

A asc Ht et (LXX). ‘age sy 
27 Kolpa., 

. 1G 
fee 618/16» Saccusa)).178 kplyew, 1o(L XX), ce 
Kara: ; 


aT 27, 
4.17 43.8. (LX X 18, ah) Kpiots, gn", To”. 
OL) 2, au 6h (LXX), )s a gnperge AGOd); 12%. 
>. iS (LXX) "00, 22. 27 , 8% (LXX)9} * KPUTtKos, 4 v 
4 _(LXX) g* 95.10. 22; 23. sift Io}: 3. 8. Ns 1; KpUTT, i Del eee 


ul 
i ‘ Kriss, ai, io: 
713 x10, 30 
eI bi i Kukhéw, 11°, Ped & LXX) 
kaTaBarrw, é 496 y7ll KUptos, 11° (LXX), 2 27 fe { x i 
L (i . 
kaTaBory, 4°, 9 an ; 82 8 (LX X) 2 (LXX) : (LX Pa 
. lh Sat ote 2 II". (LXX),  - 1076: 30 (5X), 12 
7 F ? r & 
* KaTaddnnos, 7 i (LXX) 14 19% (LXX)} A 
+ KaTaKal, 13 ; *+ RGAOF YAS 
KaTAKpLYw, a hy Kwhtw, 73, 
kataXelrw, 4}, ee . 8 55, 69 
“+ caravarloxw, oe Nahe, 1% Aja Shy 7? p 
KaTavoéw, 31, 10%. yo ri 2. 32 * 13%. 8.9 
éW 10”, xa 2, 3 16, L. 4 164 . . 
KATATATEW, 5. 10. 11 AauBdvw, 2 4 2 
11. 18 ai 3. 5. . . he 4 8. 1 29. 85, 36 
is KaTdamavots, ? (LX) 8 * gl 19 7928, I 
t kararatw, 4* kee 20 Aavddvu, r3° : t 
saabeaiberbrighacr O07 LO Fe Riese ae Sy ye cee A rive 
Kkaramlyw, 117". gt 48). Toe CL Xe) Saree, 13 
f 8 ' 6 
Kardpa, 6°, Aarpeia, 9} 
14 Pp 2 7528 7210 
KaTapyew, 2", = 3 21 Lampeter, 85, o® wy itt, ae 2 13 \ 
f IO” (LXX) ii; 13 ! 6. 7, 6. 13. a7. 15 . uk ’ 
KaTapTi¢o, Seis a Baie? héyw, I 2 °, king Ma ES 
KaTaoKevafw, 3% 4, 9°, 11%. 6M, vil. 13. 21 ghee (LXX)? “(LXX) 
x Le 5 y ee < 13 9” 3. 6. a 
vbatliac sas Selec phen 10. (T,X X) (1) Ge E 
sd KaTdoKoTos, a . 10> 8 18 ee 24. A, 12”, I3°. 
fal eral NO Aetroupyéw, 10". 
pelts 2 ie * 98 Aecroupyla, 8°, 97. 
KOTERG; D0) 9° 1o™. * NecroupycKés, hoy Pp ul} 
deat Ties peebaelichht t7 (LXX), 8° [ au 
* kadows, 68, Aevt, 7°-9 
van LO, 3. [Paul]. v1 
KQAUXT LG, fas Rewercndes hae 
+ Dice aisle S. i Aéov, 11°8, 
"+ kepaNls, Se roa NOd ew, 1137, 
; ead 20 
KiBwrds, ? 2 os 14 612. pol? tT AcGoBoréw, iets 
KAnpovouew, a 8 ; Aoyifouar, 11), 
/ ; f 2 
KAnpovouia, O°, II’. 17 eat Adycov (plur.), 57%. 2 
KAnpovdpuos, 17 (of Christ), 6!7, 117. Rbhoy, 22, 42-1218, gl. 18 61 728. 
Koes, cy 2), I Volts 22. & 
KNlvw, peat Aaurrdés (TO Aorrdv), TO", 
kowvés, oy ovw, 1072, 
. t il 
Kove (gen. ’ z a8 AUT PHO LS, aa 
Lannie a Auxvia, 97. 
Ko.vwvds, IO”, 
; 4 
Oba Eas paxpodupéw, 615, 
kéxxtvos, 9). ia, 612, 
Le, 10°5, 11% 19. 39, Paperupe eaaae 99% 13. 2 
KOM so, ? pbaddov, 9'*, 10%, 12 i 
+ _ f f 
+ korn, 7}. Py pavOdvw, 5%, 
Koopuxds, 9' [TT]. 


, 4 
¢ 26 5 7. 38 pavra, 9*. 
Kbcpmos, 4%, 9°, 10°, 117% 38, 


- INDEXES 


paprupew, 78. 17, fly T [> 4. 5. 39 


Hapripiov, z=, 

peaprus, 108 (LXX), 1 2. 

+ paorrybw, 12". 

pao’, rie 

pdxaupar, 432, 1124: 87, 

peyadwotrn, 1%, 8}. 

ne 4', 8" ( (LXX), [OPN a, 


tae eh gmat De OE i eh 
HABA oR 129, BO BPs 
= tr° a 73s. 

* Merxigedéx, 5° 19, 6, 7 
péudopar, 8® [P: au I}. 


ney, 17, 35, . B18. 20. of 8, 
Tol: 33, air, we 10. 12, 
pév odv, 74, 84, !. 
pévw, 7%, "10%, p227, p3h i, 
meplfw, 7 
* uepiopds, 24%, 4). 
épos, 6°. 
* weotrevw, 617, 
peatrns, 8°, 95, 1274 [Paul]. 
fF wécos, 2" 
werd: genit. 4", OW ae ce Baa 
it Sl” y Qld. 17. 28. 
13M 23. 25, 
accusing 9%, HOw UX), 


8. 87» 7 Qu. 26 
* werdOecis, 71, 11°, 1277. 
peradauBdvw, 67, 12, 
+ merapuédomat, 77 
peravou., 65, 12*7, 
perarlOnut, 7, 11°. 
* werémerta, 122", 
Here 2+ 5, 7 
+ Méroxos, 1? (Ex), 3 Soke 6 oy? pe eae 
* weTproTrabéw, 5”. 
weéxpt, 3&4, 9), 12% 
BH (28 PA 
lat 


pymore, 2', 3%, 41, 9M 
pant, 9° [Paul]. 
pare, 7°. 
puaivw, 121%, 

t pexpés, 811, 10%”, 
pipéomat, 137. 
papenrys, 6! [Paul]. 
puyvjnoKkw, 2° (LXX), 

To!” (LXX),°13, 

t micéw, 1°. 

* uabatodocia, 2”, 10°, 117, 

* uoOarodérys, 11%, 


rol: a 


1. 10, 11. 15. 17 


812 (LXX), 


a 


+ movoyervas, I 


255 


pvnwovetw, 1115 22, 737, 

powxds, 13%. 

de 

pdvov, 9°, 1276 (LXX). 

bovos, 9%. 

_ Hoaxes, Wate 

* wuedds, 42°. 

fupids, 1272, 

Muvorfjs, 32 85:16 714 g5 gl9 1628 
Tia kee 


vexpds, 6! 2, gl4- 17, yy19- 85, 7 220, 
vexpdw, 11)" [ Paul]. 
véos, 1274, 


* végos, 12}. 


vimoos, 53%, 
voéw, 11°, 


* yd00s, 128, 
* vouoberéw, 711, 88, 


ydj0s, 75+ 12. 16. 19. 28 
gl. 22° pol. 8. 16. (LXX 

viv, 28, 88, o% 4, 1116, bane 

vuvl, 8° (s.v.2.), 97%. 

Née, 117, 


810 (LXX), 


* pwOpdbs, 514, 62, 


* 


hehe 
aI 


* 


Eevifw, 137, 
Eévos, 1118, 13%, 
Enpds, 1179, 


0 (7, 76) (170 times). 
byxos, 12}, 


006s, 32° (LXX), o, 10”, 


BGen, 21 oa) ah BO yas te 

ofkos, 37 (LXX)* 4. 5. (LXX) 8, 88: 
(LXX)*(LXX), 107, 117. 

olkoupevn, 1; 22P, 

olxripuds, 107° [ Paul]. 

édtyos, 12}, 

dduywpéw, 125, 

dhobpevw, 1178, 

ddokatTwua, 10% 8, 

dos, 3°. 

éuviw, 311: (LX X) 18, 48 
+. mat (LXX). 

dmordrns, 415, 7), 

6pmotdw, 217, 

duolws, 97, 

dmodoyéw, 1138, 1339, 

éuoroyla, 31, 414, 1078, 

évetdiopds, 10%, 11°, 1333 [Paul]. 

Byopia, 1*,.2 (LX), oe ras, 

6H, 11°8, 

emrauy 6", G'*, T0!8, 

drws, 2°, 9), 

dpdw, 2°, 85 (LXX); 97%, 1177, 1214, 
i. 


(LXX), 61% 


256 


+ épyh, 3", 4%. 
dpéyw, 1116 [TT], 
$6p0és, 1278, 
opliw, 47. 
Spkos, 616 17, 
* doxepoola, 720 2+ 28, 
Spos, 8° (LXX), 118, r2-(LXX) # 
5s (75 times). 
Savos, 778, 


bcos, r*; Pod 37) Y Faia 3°; 97", 107°: 37 


Baris, 23, 86 g%9 1o8+ 11-35, 25, 137, 
bo pts, 75 ace 
bray, 1%, 
Bre, 710, ol7, 
ded 26 (LXX), 319, 7814.17 99. 
(LX X) 10-12 12 78, 76 18.14. 18. 19 
1217, 1338, 
+08, 3°, 
ov (ox) (61 times). 
+ od uh, 84-12, rol7, 131, 
obdé, $4, gl 1825 1o8 (LXX), 13° 
(LXX). 
obdels, 28, 618, 7138.14.19, y 214, 
ovdérore, 10! 11, 
ovKért, 1015 26, 
ofv, 214, 4) (3%) 6.111416 ll ga 
g!+ 23, 191985, 7315 (2), 
otirw, 2°, 124, 


ovpavds, 119 (LXX), 4'4, 77, 8}, 
9°24 ry12 (LXX), 12% 29: 26 
(LXX). 


ovTos (43 bes) 

obre(s), rhe Be, 5. 6% ae 9° exh tO. 
ice 

ovxl, 14, HE, 

dpelrw, 217, 5% 12, 

ép0arpuds, 4}°, 


wdOnua, 2% 19 1082, 
matdela, 12% (LXX) 7% & 1, 
* raeuTys, 12° [Paul]. 
mavdevw, 12% (LXX)* 29, 
madtov, 2!» (LXX) 4, 11%, 
wadat, 1°. 
t wadacdw, 174 (LXX), 87°. 
méduv, 158, 457-18 512 61.6 1030, 
* ravtyyupis, 12°, 
t mravredns, 7”. 
mavrobev, 94. 
mdvrore, 7”, 
mapa: accus. 1* 9(LXX), 27 (LXX) 
9 38, 28 py 112, 924, 
wapdBacts, 279" [Paul]. 
mapaBorn, 9%, 111% 
maparylvouat, 9', 


INDEXES 


* rapaderyparifw, 6%, 

+ mapadéxopuar, 12°, 
mapatréopat, 121% 5, 
mapaxaréw, 313, 107%, 131% 22, 
mapakdnots, 618, 12°, 1372, 
mapakoy, 27 [Paul]. 
tmaparausdvw, 1278, 

t rapardtw, 12°, 

Tapapévw, 7°, 
*+ mapamikpatyw, 338, 
*+ mapamikpacds, 3% 15, 

* rapamlrrw, 68, 

* rapamAnolws, 214, 

* trapapéw, 2}, 
mapagpépw, 13%. 
mdpeyu: To mapdv, 121); 

povra, 13°, 
mapenBory, 1134, 131 13, 
+ mapemldnuos, 11° [P]. 
tt mapinut, 12}2, 

t mapoikéw, 11%, 

t+ mapofvouds, 1074. 
mappa ta, ata eto: 85, 
mwas (48 times). 
maoxa, 1178, 
rdoxe, 218, 58, 9%, 13! 
warihp, U5 (LX), 03? (LXX), 5 

(EEX); 71 S(LXX), Tim, for, 

t mrarpidpyns, 74. 
marpis, 1114, 
mavouat, 10%, 
welOw, 2'° (LXX),. 6%, 132% 18, 

Soret pa, ski yrs 
mepagw, 218 39 (LXX), 4!5, 1127, 

t reipacuds, 3°. 
mépas, 618, 
mepl: genit. 2°, an 9) Soak Gee ale 

9°, 10° (LXX) 4 -(LXX)® (LXX\ 


18. 26. II’: 20. 22. 32. a igus 18 


Ta 7a 


mepiatpéw, 1012, 

+ repiBddacov, 1}? [ Paul]. 
meprépxomat, 1177, 
TEptKadUTTW, 94, 
meplkeuat, 5°, 12), 
mepiTatéw, 139. 
mwepitoinots, 10°, 
mwepisobrepov, 617, 75, 
mepiocotépws, 21, 139 [Paul]. 

* ripyvum, 8°. 
anvtxos, 74 [Paul]. 

t mixpia, 12), 
tivw, 6". 
mlirrw, ght a) 1”, 
TLoTEvW, 4°, 11° 


mloris, 42, 6:2, 10% 8% (LXX)%, 
tr 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 11. 13. 17. 20. 21. 22. 


23. 24. 28. 29. 30. 31. 33. 
27. 3 = 12° 77. 


+ 


INDEXES 


worros, 2', 3% © 10 a0}: 

wravdw, 3'°(LXX), 52, 118. 

mAdé, 94 [Paul]. 

mwrelwv, 3°, 773, 114, 

wAHOos, 1117, 

wAnOvvw, 614, 

mdnpopopla, 64, 107? [Paul]. 

mhodros, II at 

mvedua, 17 (LXX) 4, Bester 
g& 14) 7015-29, 729. 23 


= 64, 


rovew, 1k Paes (LXX), Sn OONT 
85. (LXX) 9( (LXX), 107 (LXX)® 
(LXX)®%, 11%, 1218 (LXX) 27, 


138 (LXX) 17 19.21, 
motklXos, Fey ie he 
tmouuny (of Christ), 137, 
wédeuos, 1194, 
MOARS AF Liye 1206 1318, 


t wonirns, 81. 


moNAdxts, 67, 9% 26 rol, 


* rodupepas, I 


onus, ails ee 9%, tO} 12°: 15. 25. 


* rodurpérws, 1}, 


$e 


——- 


= 


* 


* 


moua, 9! [Paul]. 
tovnpds, 3}%, 10%, 
mépvn; 11°), 

mépvos, 1216, 134, 
méppwlev, 1138, 
wogos, 9'*, 10°, 

more, 1°18 

mov, 118, 

tov, 2°, 44, 

Rieti 2 tO eS e121, 
mpayyua, 618, rol, rr}, 
pena, 2'°, 72. 
mpeoBvrepos, 117 (plur.). 
mpigw, 1137 

mpd, 11%, 

tpodyw, 738, 
mpoBarov, 137% 
mpoBrérw, 11%, 
mpddnros, 714 [T]. 
mpddpomos, 6”, 
mpoep@, 47. 

mpd0ects, 97. 
wpdxermat, 618, 12) 3, 


mpos: accus. 178. 18 217, 418 gl. 5. 
7.14. 611, 721, ls. 20 (LXX), 1016 
(LXX), 1118, 124 1.11, 7318, 

Tpocaryopetw, 51°, 

mpordéxouat, 10%4, 11°, 

fib Ga Ae pO OI, 
1216 


mpocevxomat, 1338, 
mpocéxw, 2}, 713, 
mpbakatpos, 11”, 
mpookxuvéw, 18 (LXX), 117), 


17 


257 


*+ mpocoxOltw, 31% 17, 
mpoorlOnu, 1219, 
* rpdaparos, 10”, 
mporpépw, 5+ %7, 7%, B84 79 14, 
25.98 ol. 2 8 1.12 yy4. 17 97, 


mpoopopd, 10% (LXX) ®(LXX) !° 
14. 18 


* rpdaxvo.s, 1178, 
mpdcwrov, 974, 
mporepos, 48, 727, 10%, 
mpopyrns, 11, 119, 
mpwrov, 7%. 
pros, 8% 18, gl- 2 6 8 15.18 109, 
* rpwrordkia, 12)8, 
mpwrdroxos, 18, 11%, 128, 
mvdn, 132. 
Wipsele (LAK), 10s oi el 
(LXX). 


mwas, 2%, 


218. 29 


‘PadB, 1154, 
paBdos, 18 (LXX), 94, 117! (LXX),. 
pavri¢w, Ql 1% 21 122, 
pavriouds, 124 P]. 
pjua, 15, 65, 115, 12), 
T pleas i2e, 


* gaBBaricuds, 4% 
garevw, 1276: 27, 
*+ Dadje, Aa = 
+ oddreyé, 12”, 
t LDamoujr, 1152, 
* Lapyov, 11°, 
odpkivos, 716 [Paul]. 
odpé, 214, 57, gl 18, 19% 129, 
Zdppa, 117}, 
oBévyum, 114, 
t+ celw, 1276, 
onuctoy, 2". 
onpepov, 15 (LXX), 3% (LXX) 8" 
(LAR), 4? (LXNS, $8 (LX), 13°, 
Liwy, 12" 


okevos, aly 
oK vt 82-5, g? 8 6.8.11. 21 p19 y 310, 
oxid, 8°, 101. 

+ oKXnptve, Bea AG 


omépua, 216 yy). ie (LXX). 
om AaLov, 1138, 
omodds, 9}, 
omovddgw, 41, 
omovdy, 61, 
* orduvos, 9%. 
oTdows, 98. 
oraupos, 12%, 
orevagw, 1317, 
arepeds, 51% 14, 


t crepavdw, 27 9 ig ba 


258 INDEXES 


oro.xetov, 512, lie Too infin. 2." eo ie 
or bua, Tre 3, (Lec), ohio 
fod, 15 8: 10. ll. 12, 97. 12, se 6 614) * rod-yos, gi? 1519 ros, 
ait. 21 85. 107: . 118, 13°, rpdmega, 9°. 
‘: ovyxaxovyé, beg * rpaxnrifw, 433, 
guyKepdvvuut, 4” [Paul]. t rpeis, 1078, 
ovykAnpovduos, 11%, Tpéxw, 12}, 
* cuumabéw, 4), 10%4, tplBoros, 6 
gupdépw, 12°, * rolunvos, 118, 
t ovvavrdw, 73+ 10, Tpémos, 13°, 
* cuvarddAume, 115), Tpopy, 51% 14, 
* cuvdéw, 13°. *+ rpoxid, 12}8, 
cuveldnats, 9% 14, 10% 2, 1338, Tuyxdvw, 88, 11%, 
* cuveripmaprupéw, 24, * ruuravitw, 11%, 
guvrérera, 97, + rémos, 8°, 
i TUrTEnEw, 8. 
3 t oxed6v, 9%, vdwp, 9 TO7s, 
coyw, us 725, t verbs, 67. 
capa, 10 (LXX) 1 22) 73% 2, vids: (Christ), 135: (LXX)§, ) 38, 
cwrnpla, 114, 23-10, 59, "69" 9%, 117, 44, 55 (LXX)8, 68, 7328, 10%; 
(men), 2% (LXX) 10 7d, yb 22, 24 
+ rages, 5% 10, 620, 71.17, 125: & (LXX) 78, 
ravpos, 9!8, 104, bets (34 times). 
Taxuov, 131% 3, t duvéw, 2), 
ré, 18, gl 4l2° cl. 7.146 62 4.5, 19, Srakon, 58. 
83, gh: 2. 9 19. 10°, 1132, ype vrakovw, 5°, 118, 
reixos, 11°, t trapées, 10°, 
réXevos, 534, ol. brdpyw, 10°4, 
* 


redevérns, 61 [Paul]. breixkw, 13)7, 
Tedecdw, 219, 59, 71% 28) o® rol 14, | + drevayrlos, 1077 [Paul]. 


ce he 1273, vrép: genit. ae S440 6* et} a g 
trerelwors, 714. eR bee 1317: accus. 4 
* rehewwr7s, 127, brepava, 9°, 
TerevTdw, 11, dré2. genit.go''134 Votale wigs 
Tens ere eae, Tr. 12%8 (L XX). 
répas, 2°, brddevrypua, 411, $°, 9”, 
+ recoapdxovra, 3% 17, + broxdrw, 2°, 
rexvirns, 11? (God). Urouévw, 10%, 12% 3-7: 
TNALKOUTOS, 2°, Urouovy, 10°, 12}, 
rlOnur, 1718 (LXX), ro8 (LXX). + bromdéduov, 113, 1038, 
rikrw, 67. brécracts, 13, 314, 111 [Paul]. 
47% pape LOL OBS, Oa Mire te + trrocré\Xw, 10°8, 
rhuwos, 134, * baroaroN}, 10°, 
Tiuddeos, 137. t vrocrpégu, 7}, 
* riuwpla, 10, vrordcow, 28 (LXX), 12° 
ris, 1518, 26 (LXX), 316 17-18 19, Yoowros, 9} 
y par a tt i ed 8 BY GE vorepéw, 4}, 1187, 12), 
TES, ee ee ieee eee pace borepos (Uorepor), 12)!, 
M, p412 B38 1020.27. 98 p40" 215. Symr0s, 18, 725, 
oy ie t bYioros, 7). 
rovyapodv, 12' [Paul]. 
rolvuy, 1333, gpalyw (davoueva), 114, 
Toiotros, 7, S*, 11 4u12%, 14°; gdavepdw, g® 6, 
* rouwrepos, 4}, * pavrdgw, 127), 
réros, 87, 118, 1217, Papaw, 1174, 
rosoiros, 14, 47, 7%, 10%, 12}, gépw, 1°, 6%, g!6, 12, 3313, 


rére, 10% (LXX) 9%, 1276, gevyw, 11*4, 


INDEXES 


pnul, 8°, 

pradeddpla, 133. 

prrokevia, 13? [Paul]. 
tT prog, 1 

Papebline AT 11%. ati ae (lax Xk). 
* poBepds, 1077 8 , 12, 

poBos, 215, 

govos, 1187, 

gpdcow, 11°% [Paul]. 

puraxh, 1158, 

pudn, 718. 14, 
t pvw, 12%, 

gwry, 37 (ea 16°(LXX), 

(LXX), 1219 26 
purifw, 64, 1082, 


4! 


Xapa, 10%, 12% 2), 7317, 
*xapaxrip, 1%, 
Napisy 27(5.0:d;), 4 eh 10%? 1215378, 
129 25 


MetnUS, 11745413 (LX ). 

yelp, POL XX) os( XX), 63: 
8? (LXX); 10*, 1212 (LXX), 

xEetpotrolnros, gi}. 24, 

, Xelpor, lo. 

* xepouBelv, 9°. 

xpela, 5% wil 10°6, 


259 


xpnuaritw, 85, 117, 125, 
XGUrTOS, ott gS LO 
10!) 7128, 738-21, 

tT xplw, 1%. 
+ xpovlfw, 10%. 
xpdvos, 47, 51%, 11%, 
xpuceos, 94, 
xpuclov, 94, 
xwrds, 1233, 
xwplfw, 7%, 
xls 4 7 20 gf 18. 2228 128, 
18 40, 728. 14, 


11, 14, 24. 28 
9 , 


Pevdouc, 618, 

Ynr\addw, 12)8, 

YUx, a>} 619, 10m (LXX) am 127; 
Pau, 


Go, 7°21 3% 

ds, 1+ (IXX) #2 (LXX), 3% 5:6 & 
(LXX) ¥+ (LXX) 8 (LXX), 48 
(LXX), 6", 79, 11%! (LXX) 
27,29, 95-7 16. 27 38. 17, 

t doel, 1/2, 

éomep, 4}, 727 92, 

wore, 13°, 

dpedeee, Aa are 


Il. SUBJECTS AND AUTHORS. 


Aaron, 63 f. 

Abbott, E. A., 67. 

Abel, xlii, 163 f., fa $i 

Ablutions, 75, 144 f. 

Abraham, xv, 37, 85 17, 1081, 224. 

Access to God, xliif., 60, 125, 143 i, 
219. 

Adjectives, Ix. 

Aeschylus, 29, 66, 134. 

Age, old, 72. 

Agriculture, metaphors from, 81. 

Alexandrian Church, its attitude to- 
wards ‘‘ Hebrews,” xviii f. 

Alford, 212. 

Alliteration, lx, 57, IOI, 199, 216, 
etc. 

Altar of incense, 114 f. 

Anastasius Abbas, 26. 

Anchor, metaphor of, 88 f. 

Angels, 9 f., 16, 18, 21f., 

Anthology, the Greek, xix, 89. 

Aorist participle, use of, 31, 121. 


100, 216f. | 


Apocalypse of John, the, xlvii, 114, 
164, 193. 

Apollinarius, xix. 

peer xxiv, 39, 43, 77, 82, 149, 
180. 

Apuleius, 144. 

Aristophanes, 70, 150, 157. 

Aristotle, lvi,.29, 60, 85, 151, 197. 

Ark of covenant, 115 f. 

Armenian version, Ixxi, 4, 17, etc. 

Arnold, Matthew, xxxv, xxxix, 206. 

Article, 47, 88. 

Assonance, Ix, 87, 96, 100, etc. 

Atheism, 167. 

Atonement, Day of, xxxvii, 63, 117. 

Augustine, 43, 103, 172, 177, 185, 216. 

Aurelius, Marcus, 10, 72, 81, 167, 
174, 181, 228. 

Awe, xxxvi, lxiii, 218 f., 223. 


Bacher, W., 91. 
Backwardness, 71. 


260 


Bakhuyzen, Van de Sande, 96. 

Balzac, 189. 

Baptism, 75, 144 f. 

Barak, 185. 

Barnabas, and the authorship of 
** Hebrews,” xviii f. 

Barnabas, Epistle of, xiv, xxviii, 52, 
70, (145; 178, etc. 

Baruch, Apocalypse of, 12, 106, 114, 
TOM 2535 .221, etc. 

Beneficence, 237 f. 

Bengel, 87, 110, 139, 184, 194, 211, 
227, 

Bennett Gy No i215; 

Bentley, 33, 39, 95, 195- 

Beza, 37, 66, 188. 

Bezaleel, 106. 

Bischoff, A., 241. 

Blass, lix, 42, 54, 66, 69, 73, 113, II5, 
165, 211, 218, 242. 

Bleek, 24, 218. 

Blood in sacrifices, xxxviif., xlii. 

Blood of Jesus, the, xlif., 123f., 
243. 

Bousset, xliv. 

Boxsets otis. 0; cic. 

Brandt, W., 161. 

Bréhier, 6. 

Brotherly love, 84, 224. 

Brown, T. E., 23. 

Browning, Robert, 47, 202. 

Bruce, AB.) 41, 66; 76,135. 

Burton, E. D., 31, 156. 


Cain, 92, 163 f. 

Calvin; xxxiv £, 4,,8,119) 37s559,8075 
158, 177, 179, 243. 

Campbell, Macleod, 26, 40, 196, 197. 

Canon, ‘‘ Hebrews” in the NT, xixf., 
Ixx. 

Carlyle, xxxvi. 

Carlyle, “Ay J., xi, xiv; 

Castellio, 37. 

Censer, the golden, 115. 

Chrysostom, Ixxiiil, 2, 7, 31, 48, 70, 
153, 159, 179, 194, 216, 220, 240, 


242. 

“ Christ,” Ixili, 14. 

Church, the, 4, 33, 39, 48. 

Cicero, 27, 106, 178, 210, etc. 

City of God, 170, 216. 

Clement of Alexandria, xv, 46, 47, 
12550102; 200,210,207. 

Clement of Rome, xiii, xiv, xix, 
xxii, 8, 140, 165, 184, 189, 213. 
Clement, Second (homily of), xiv, 

Xxvili, 236, etc. 


INDEXES 


Confidence, religious, 44, 48, 229. 

Contentment, 229. 

Conybeare, F. C., lxxi, 200. 

Cosmas Indicopleustes, 37, 143, 154. 

Courage, 229. 

Covenant, Ideas of the, xxvf., xl, 
107437,;127, 

Coverdale, 104, 142. 

Creation and Christ, 5, 
20,150, "101 L 

Cromwell, 73. 

Cronert, 61, 104, 178, 229. 

Crucifixion, 80, 197, 235. 

Cyprian, 75. 


6; 1 §etaailes 


Dante, 46, 160. 

Date of ‘* Hebrews,” xvi, xxi, 45. 

Davidson, A. B., xxxi, 2, 38, 56, 88, 
¥32.,177, 1o2ndoa, 212: 

Death, 35 f., 133. 

Delitzsch, 143. 

Demetrius, 245. 

Denney, James, lili, 6, 124, 139. 

Devil, the, 11, 34 f. 

Didache, the, 75, 113, 239. 

Diognetus, Epistle to, xxii, xlix, 232 

Discipline, 64, 66, 67, 201 f. 

Dods, Marcus, 25, 125. 

Dryden, xlvi. 


Education, 199 f. 

Endurance, 85, 199 f., 210. 

Enoch, 165 f. 

Ephraem Syrus, Ixxi, 58. 

Epictetus, 35f., 71, 156, 
etc. 

Erasmus, xix, 79 97, 236, 245. 

Esau, 81, 210f, 

Eschatology, xxxiii, xxxiv, liv, 4, 16, 
134, etc. 

Eucharist, xxxili, 128, 234. 

Euripides, 56, 73, 81, 82, 83, 173. 

Eustathius, 2 

Examples, 85, 193, 231. 

Ezra, Fourth book of, 12, 53, 213. 


193, 196, 


Faith, xliiif., 50, 85, 157f., 160f. ; 
of Jesus, xliv, 33, 192f., 196. 

Fatherhood of God, xxxv, 30, 201 f. 

Fear, 35, 168, 179, 181. 

Field, Dr., 46, 171: 

Fire, metaphor of, 84, 150, 223. 

Fitch, Sir Joshua, 93. 

Fourth Gospel, xlix, 6, 7, 168. 

France, Anatole, xxiv. 


Friendship, 226. 


Fronto, 237. 


INDEXES 


Genitive absolute, the, Ixi, 110, 190. 
Gethsemane, 33, 39, 66, 198. 
Gideon, 185. 

Gilmour, James, 80. 

God, as creator, 51, 162 f. ; as Father, 
XXXV, 30; as Judge, liv, 150f. ; 
as transcendent, xxxvi. 

Goodrick, A. T., 161. 

Gosse, Edmund, xxx. 

Grace, 26 f. 

Greek fathers, interpretation of 
‘““Hebrews” in, 26, 37, 48, 128, 
159, etc. 

Green, l,i tis, 217. 

Gregory of Nazianzus, 221. 

Gregory of Nyssa, 8. 

Grotius, 79. 

Grouping of MSS, Ixxii. 

Growth, 72 f. 


Habakkuk, 157 f. 

Haggai, 221. 

Hands, Laying on of, 75. 

Hardy, Thomas, 175. 

Harnack, 73, 148, 226. 

Heaven, 60. 

‘‘Hebrews,” meaning of the title, 


xv. 

** Heirship,” lili, 5. 
Hellenistic Judaism, Ixiii, 18. 
Hermas, xiv, xviii, 217, etc. 
Herwerden, 51. 

Hickie, W. J., 19. 
Hicks722. 

Holtzmann, O., 233. 
Holzmeister, 3. 
Hope, 33, 44, 85, 98. 
DLOrt 3 36,232,243. 
Hospitality, 224 f. 
Household of God, 42. 


Image of God, the, 6. 

Impossible things, the four, 76. 

Individualism, 147. 

Infinitive, the epexegetic, 63; for other 
uses of the infinitive, see 35, 47, 
83, 96. 

Inns, 224 f. 

Inspiration, 22, 44, 150. 

Insubordination, 239. 

Intercession of saints and angels, 
Xeetey X11, 116, TOO2 213. 

Isaac, 178. 

Isaiah, martyrdom of, 188, 189. 

Isidore, 128. 

Isokrates, Ivi, lvii, 194, 204. 

Italy, xxi, 246f. 


261 


Jacob,-178. 

Jebb,: Ril Gy, 224: 

Jephthah, 185. 

Jeremiah, xl, 107f., 139f., 188. 

Jerome, 26, 81, 166, 202, 239. 

Jesus, birth of, lii; death of, xxxiv f., 
xxxlx, 27 f. ; human characteristics 
Ol; XSXV1, XIlil fy OS;V 1OT, (102 1): 
names of, Ixili; prayers of, 66; 
priesthood of, xxv f., 98f.; teach- 
ING 4Ol, 19s astoon, xxuif., ix!'f; 
II, 66f., 164, etc. 

Joseph, 178. 

Josephus, xxii, 130, 163, etc. 

Joshua, 43, 52, 183. 

Joy, 154; of Jesus, 14, 196. 

Jubilees, Book of, 91, 136, 170. 

Judaism, xxvif. 

Judith, 186. 

Junius; Poyt7; 194,215. 

Juristic terms, 87; 97; 111, 127 f., 
138. 

Justin Martyr, xiv, xlix, II, 33, 41, 
75 99, 164, 239. 

Justinian, 5. 


Keble, 229. 

Kennedy, H. A. A., xl, lv, 123, 209. 
Kingdom of God, xxxiii. 

Kogel, Julius, xxvii. 

Kypke, x, 61,/203,0215, 222. 


Lactantius, 7, 42, 93. 

Lake, Kirsopp, Ixx. 

Latin Versions, Ixix, 9I, 155, 171, 
182, 225. 

Law, the, 96f. 

Levitical priesthood, 94, 96. 

Libations, I19. 

Living God, the, 47, 54, 152. 

Logos, the, xxxiv, xlvii, xlix, 6, 54f. 

Loofs, 218. 

**Lord,” liv, Ixiii. 

Love, xxxv, xxxvi, 82, 146f. 

Lucian, 20, 56, 212, etc. 

Lucretius, 36. 


Macalister, R. A. S., 122. 

Macaulay, xxx. 

Maccabean martyrs, 
186 f., 189, 192, 196. 

Maccabees, Fourth book of, 59, 176, 
192. 

Mackintosh, H. R., 1. 

MacNeill, H., xliv. 

Marett,“ Rik. 2123: 

Marriage, 226 f. 


152; "132i, 


262 


Martial metaphors, 15, 140, 198. 

Maximus of Tyre, 34, 53,154, 156, 
195, 204. 

Mediation, 107. 

Melanchthon, xxi. 

Melchizedek, xxxiif., go f. 

Menander, 3, 7, 85. 

Ménégoz, xxi, 159. 

Merits of the fathers, xxxix, 229. 

Michael, 37, 100, 107, 185. 

Milk, metaphor from, 7of. 

Miracles, 19 f. 

Mixed metaphors, 89. 

Money, 228 f. 

Montefiore, C. G., xxxvii, 77. 

Moses, 40f., 107, 216f. 

Moulton, J. H., 94, 136, 176, etc. 

Muratorian Canon, xv. 

Musonius Rufus, 35 e¢ passzm. 

Mystery-religions, li, 75, 148, 233. 

Mysticism, livf., 9, 170, 181, I9I, 
234. 


‘“*Name,” 8. 

Nestorians, 26. 

Noah, 167 f. 

Nominative for vocative, 13, 138. 
Norden, 30. 

Novatians, xx. 


Oath of God, 86f., 99. 

Obedience of Jesus, 67 f. 

Odes of Solomon, 34, 147, 196, 207. 

Oecumenius, lxxiv, 26, 74, 99, 128. 

Officials of the church, 230 f. 

Old Testament, use of, xvi, Ixii, 45, 
129, 215f., etc.; argument from 
silence of, 92. 

Optative mood, 243. 

Origen, on authorship of ‘*‘ Hebrews,” 
xvilif.; on interpretation of, 25, 


70, 80, 81, 129, 131, 165, 176, 188. 


Parables of Jesus, 5, 50; Jewish, 111. 
Paronomasia, 29, 66, 154, etc. 
Participles, use of, 32, 240. 

Patience, 157, 169f. 

Patria potestas, 203 f. 

Paul, and the authorship of 
‘* Hebrews,” xviii, xxix; and 
author of ‘* Hebrews,” xxxixf., 
xlvili, 10, 18, 34, 126, 155, 197, 
216, etc. 

Paulinus of Nola, 191. 

Peace, 205 f., 242. 

Peake, A. S., 181, 235. 

Pearson, A. C., 133, 210. 


INDEXES 


People of God, the, xxxviii, 39, etc. 

Perdelwitz, xxvii, 244. 

Perfect tense, lix, 91, 94, etc. 

Persecution, 36, 153 f. 

Peter, First Epistle of, xv, xvii 
xxxvi, lxiv, 36, 124, 175, etc. 

Pfleiderer, lii, 233. 

Philo, xxxili, xxxv, xlix, Ixif., 4 4 
passim. ; 

Philosophical ideas, xxxif., 106. 

Pilgrims, 174 f. 

Platonism, xxxi, 102, 152. 

Polykarp, 80. 

Praise, 33, 236. 

Prayer, 241. 

Pre-existence of Christ, 5 f. 

Prepositions, 4, 9, 17, 19, 29f., 45, 
63, 96, EIO>) EI, -120,4126,55120, 
161, 

Present tense, use of the, xxii. 

Priesthood of Jesus, xxvf., xxxix f., 
xliv f., etc. 

Priests, 95 f., 144. 

Primasius, 27, 136, 164. 

Prisoners, 154, 225. 

Promise, God’s, 85 f., 190 f. 

Prophets, the OT, 2 f. 

Psichari, 20. 

Purdy, Professor, xxvi f. 

Pythagoras, 71, 89. , 


Quintilian, 71, 81, 231. 
Quotations from the LXX, I xxii. 
Index III. 


Ses 


Rabbinical interpretations of the OT, 
75/12, 32, 40, 52077; of eter 

Radermacher, 53, 105, 128. 

Rahab, 184, 225. 

Ransom, 126. 

Reiske, J. J., 88, 125. 

Religion as worship, xlivf., 125. 

Rendall, F., 25. 

Repentance, 74; no second, 77f., 
212f. 

Resch, 72. 

Rest of God, the, 45 f. 

Resurrection of Jesus, xxxviiif., 237, 
242. 

Retribution, 46, 149. 

Reuss, 29, 42. 

Revelation, 2, 55. 

Reverence, xxxvi, 66. 

Reward, 167. 

Rhythm in style, lvif., 159, 209, ete. 

Riggenbach, 71, 218, 246. 

Ritschl, 39. 


INDEXES 


Sabatier, xxxii. 
Sacerdotal metaphors, 34, 60, 144, 


234 f. 

Sacrifice of Christ, xxxivf., xliif., 
IDL piaii.;an OD ritual, ixxxv-t, 
xlii., 233. 

Samson, 185, 186. 

Schoettgen, 18, 52, 79. 

Schultz, 149, 

Scott, KE. F., xxxiil,: 73. 

Scott, Sir Walter, 187. 

Sedulius Scotus, Ixxiv, 5, 182. 

Seeberg, 37, 38, 194, 219, 244. 

Selwyn, E. C., 215. 

Semitisms, Ixii. 

Seneca, 7, 36, 57, 60, 83, 106, 182, 
226, 245, 246. 

Septuagint. See Old Testament. 

Shakespeare, 22. 

Shame, xxii, 153, 180f., 197, 236. 

Simcox, W. H., Ixiv. 

Singo19)39.62,.74, 117, 126-4, 

Sinai, theophany at, 18, 214f. 

Sinlessness of Jesus, 32, 123f. 

Sins, unpardonable, 63, 79f., 148 f. 

Smith, W. Robertson, xv, xxxviil, 5, 
gf., 18, 34, 67. 

Son of Man, xlix, 23. 

Souter, A., xxi. . 

Spirit, the human, 56; the Holy, 18, 
19, 20, 44, 75, 78f., 117, 151. 

PIA T'.5!'35.2 33. 

Starkie, 181. 

Stephen, speech of, Ixii, 18, 106. 

Stewart, H. L., 190. 

Stoicism, 30, 59, 69f., 72, 154, 182. 

Stuart, Moses, 25. 

Suetonius, 57, 99. 

Sufferings of Jesus, xxxviii, I, 20f., 
27 Rvetc, 3 Ol men, 23,. 30. 

Sumerian religion, lii, 106. 

Symbolism, xlvi f. 

Sympathy of Jesus, 37f., 59f. 

Syriac versions, lxxi, 36, etc. 


Tears of Jesus, 65. 

Temple, the Jewish, xvi, xxii. 

Temptation, 36, 59. 

Temptation of Jesus, the, 38 f., 59. 

Tertullian, xvii, xviii, 75, 79, 165, 
166, 223, 235. 


263 


Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, 
xli, xlvii, etc. 

Textual problems, lix, lIxivf., 26f., 
OOTP 1060 135; 4171,- 150, 190, 
214. 

Thekla, 220. 

Theodore of Mopsuestia, Ixxiii, 26, 

Theodoret, Ixxiv, 35, 93, 145, 195, 
198. 

Theodotion, 10, 129. 

Theophylact, 87, 107, 128, 194, 216. 

Timotheus, 244. 

Tithes, 91 f. 

Torrey, Ga C., xxix. 

Tucker, 0.9G: ,.225. 

Tyndale, 13, 66, 82, 159. 


Union with Christ, liv f., 32, 47. 
Unworldliness, 235. 
Upanishads, 15. 


Valckenaer, x, xxvill, II, 21, 
222, 

Variety in revelation, 2. 

Vaughan, C. J., 80. 

Vision of God, 181, 209. 

Vocation, 67. 

Volz, xlix. 

Vulgate, lxixf., 1f., 27, 62, 65, 109, 
140, etc. 


175; 


Warneck, G., 82. 

Weiss, B., Ixxili, 110, 207. 

Western Church, attitude 
‘* Hebrews,” xix f. 

Wetstein, 57, 190, 195, 197. 

Wickham, 1. Co 273,136, '70,° 127; 

Williams, C. R., xxix. 

Windisch, 25. 

Wisdom, the Book of, xxxi, lii, lvii, 
7, 34, 90, 106, 166, etc. 

Women, 184. 

World, creation of the, 5f., 
159f. ; end of the, 15, 52, 221. 

** World,” The, 168. 

Worship, xliiif., 11, 125, 237. 

Wrath of God, xxxv, 48. 

Wrede, W., xxix, 70, 244. 


towards 


30 


Zahn, Theodor, xviii, xx, 147, 246. 
ZAM Es FAsset 1.030, 29, 


INDEXES 


III. QUOTATIONS OR REMINISCENCES OF 
THE OLD TESTAMENT. 


GENESIS. 

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